Cece) i 
‘ Cineney* : i erate . 

; eres 

Rear 
grebe 

Sest yy 5 : pretpeeteate sty 
. Payee ae ety 4 

i - 

Rpiepertasstgdiss urdu! ay ; 

pret hese sites tase ebay 


Por eesnr st 


Sees 


THE UNIVERSITY OF 
NORTH CAROLINA 
LIBRARY 


THE 
CHILDERS COFLEC TION 
FOR THE STUDY OF 
ENGLISH LITERATURE 


ACQUIRED Te ¥OUG#H 
“- >@ PRILNDS OR ‘Lise Lis -AR 1 


SN ACS ‘ ov DNR At eh 


RSITY OF N.C. AT CHAPEL HILL 


Wait MN 


10001749798 


This book is due at the WALTER R. DAVIS LIBRARY on 
the last @ate stamped under ‘“‘Date Due.” If not on hold it 
may be renewed by bringing it to the library. 


DATE 
DUE 


‘JUN & 4Qg5 


DATE 
DUE 


RET. 


RET. 


= 
a 
J »J L 
= oe 3 af 
ic rail 
me ; “ > ce 
ceqee. | u ‘4 
A s =: 
sD a 


| 
pare 
eis 
t 

(ca 
cca 
(aon 
ai 
ae 
laa! 
lsat 
Baro 
as 
perio 
oe 
oeaaal 
Bens 
emia 
[eeteanioidsacl 


= oS fr ¢ 
¥% U iJ - L 

' 1 i, i) 

h | i 

moa Es i 


Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2023 with funding from 
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 


https://archive.org/details/oscarwildehislif23harr 


= : 
Ey ; , 
i 
‘ t 
. oe i 
ig 4 
2 
eet Re Se 
+ 7 ? _ 
> A m 
1 
J 
> *a - 
oe ey 2 
~ 
7 eee a 
‘ 
i the ‘ 
ote 
. 
= seed 7 > 
. * 
= 7 ‘e 
Roe 
- : 
4 
if i 
t 
t ts 7 
as , 
\ 2 - » 
4 Wyk ray 
s ah as 
r & nt 3 
: ‘ : # 
? > A = 
~” 
+ ia 
« 
4 * 
=| : J 
\ 2 
. a a 7 


glas About 1893 


ilde and Lord Alfred Dou 


car VW 


S 


O 


OSCAR WILDE 


HIS LIFE AND 
CONFESSIONS 


BY 
FRANK HARRIS 


VOLUME If 


PRINTED AND PUBLISHED 
Bicurn AUTHOR 
29 WAVERLEY PLACE NEW YORK CITY 
MCMXVIII 


For he who sins a second time 
Wakes a dead soul to pain, 
And draws it from its spotted shroud, 
And makes it bleed again, 
And makes it bleed great gouts of blood, 
And makes it bleed in vain. 
—The Ballad of Reading Gaol. 


Copyright, 1916, 
By Frank Harris 


XN 


BOOK Il 
CHAPTER XVII 


Prison for Oscar Wilde, an English prison 
with its insufficient bad food! and soul-degrading 
routine for that amiable, joyous, eloquent, pam- 
pered Sybarite. Here was a test indeed; an 
ordeal as by fire. What would he make of two 
years’ hard labour in a lonely cell? 

There are two ways of taking prison, as of 
taking most things, and all the myriad ways 
between these two extremes; would Oscar be con- 
quered by it and allow remorse and hatred to 
corrupt his very heart, or would he conquer the 
prison and possess and use it? Hammer or an- 
vil—which? 

Victory has its virtue and is justified of itself 
like sunshine; defeat carries its own condemna- 
tion. Yet we have all tasted its bitter waters: 
only “infinite virtue”? can pass through life vic- 
torious, Shakespeare tells us, and we mortals are 
not of infinite virtue. The myriad vicissitudes 


1Some years ago The Daily Chronicle proved that though the general 
standard of living is lower in Germany and in France than in England; 
yet the prison food in France and especially in Germany is far better 
than in England and the treatment of the prisoners far more humane. 


Sor 


640'744 


222 OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 


of the struggle search out all our weaknesses; 
test all our powers. Every victory shows a more 
difficult height to scale, a steeper pinnacle of 
god-like hardship—that’s the reward of victory: 
it provides the hero with ever-new battle-fields: 
no rest for him this side the grave. 

But what of defeat? What sweet is there in 
its bitter? ‘This may be said for it; it is our 
great school: punishment teaches pity, just as 
suffering teaches sympathy. In defeat the brave 
soul learns kinship with other men, takes the rub 
to heart; seeks out the reason for the fall in his 
own weakness, and ever afterwards finds it im- 
possible to judge, much less condemn his fellow. 
But after all no one can hurt us but ourselves; 
prison, hard labour, and the hate of men; what 
are these if they make you truer, wiser, kinder? 

Have you come to grief through self-indulgence 
and good-living? Here are months in which 
men will take care that you shall eat badly and 
lie hard. Did you lack respect for others? Here 
are men who will show you no consideration. 
Were you careless of others’ sufferings? Here 
now you shall agonize unheeded: gaolers and gov- 
ernors as well as black cells just to teach you. 
Thank your stars then for every day’s experience, 
for, when you have learned the lesson of it and 
turned its discipline into service, the prison 
shall transform itself into a hermitage, the 


OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 323 


dungeon into a home; the burnt skilly shall be 
sweet in your mouth; and your rest on the plank- 
bed the dreamless slumber of a little child. 

And if you are an artist, prison will be more 
to you than this; an astonishing vital and novel 
experience, accorded only to the chosen. What 
will you make of it? That’s the question for 
you. Itisa wonderful opportunity. Seen truly, 
a prison’s more spacious than a palace; nay, 
richer, and for a loving soul, a far rarer experi- 
ence. Thank then the spirit which steers men 
for the divine chance which has come to you; 
henceforth the prison shall be your domain; in 
future men will not think of it without thinking 
of you. Others may show them what the good 
things of life do for one; you will show them what 
suffering can do, cold and regretful sleepless 
hours and solitude, misery and distress. Others 
will teach the lessons of joy. The whole vast 
underworld of pity and pain, fear and horror and 
injustice is your kingdom. Men have drawn 
darkness about you as a curtain, shrouded you 
in blackest night; the light in you will shine the 
brighter. Always provided of course that the 
light is not put out altogether. 

Hammer or anvil? How would Oscar Wilde 
take punishment? 


We could not know for months. Yet he was 


324 OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 


an artist by nature—that gave one a glimmer 
of hope. We needed it. For outside at first 
there was an icy atmosphere of hatred and con- 
tempt. The mere mention of his name was met 
with expressions of disgust, or frozen silence. 

One bare incident will paint the general feel- 
ing more clearly than pages of invective or de- 
scription. ‘The day after Oscar’s sentence Mr. 
Charles Brookfield, who, it will be remembered, 
had raked together the witnesses that enabled 
Lord Queensberry to “justify”? his accusation; 
assisted by Mr. Charles Hawtrey, the actor, 
gave a dinner to Lord Queensberry to celebrate 
their triumph. Some forty Englishmen of good 
position were present at the banquet—a feast 
to celebrate the ruin and degradation of a man of 
genius. 

Yet there are true souls in England, noble, 
generous hearts. I remember a lunch at Mrs. 
Jeune’s, where one declared that Wilde was at 
length enjoying his deserts; another regretted 
that his punishment was so slight, a third with 
precise knowledge intimated delicately and with 
quiet complacence that two years’ imprisonment 
with hard labour usually resulted in idiocy or 
death: fifty per cent., it appeared, failed to win 
through. It was more to be dreaded on all ac- 
counts than five years’ penal servitude. “You 
see 1t begins with starvation and solitary con- 


OSCAR WiLDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 325 


finement, and that breaks up the strongest. I 
think it will be enough for our vainglorious 
talker.” Miss Madeleine Stanley (now Lady 
Midleton) was sitting beside me, her fine, sensi- 
tive face clouded: I could not contain myself, 
I was being whipped on a sore. 

“This must have been the way they talked 
in Jerusalem,” I remarked, “after the world- 
tragedy.” 

“You were an intimate friend of his, were you 
not?” insinuated the delicate one gently. 

“A friend and admirer,” I replied, ‘‘and al- 
ways shall be.” 

A glacial silence spread round the table, 
while the delicate one smiled with deprecating 
contempt, and offered some grapes to his neigh- 
bour; but help came. Lady Dorothy Nevill was 
a little further down the table: she had not 
heard all that was said, but had caught the tone 
of the conversation and divined the rest. 

“Are you talking of Oscar Wilde?” she ex- 
claimed. “I’m glad to hear you say you are a. 
friend. I am, too, and shall always be proud of 
having known him, a most brilliant, charming 
man: | 

“TT think of giving a dinner to him when he 
comes out, Lady Dorothy,” I said. 

*‘T hope you’ll ask me,” she answered bravely. 
‘IT should be glad to come. I always admired 


326 OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 


and liked him; I feel dreadfully sorry for 
Him.’ 

The delicate one adroitly changed the con- . 
versation and coffee came in, but Miss Stanley 
said to me: 

“T wish I had known him, there must have 
been great good in him to win such friendship.” 

“Great charm in any case,” I replied, “‘and 
that’s rarer among men than even goodness.” 

The first news that came to us from prison 
was not altogether bad. He had broken down 
and was in the infirmary, but was getting 
better. The brave Stewart Headlam, who had 
gone bail for him, had visited him, the Stewart 
Headlam who was an English clergyman, and yet, 
wonder of wonders, a Christian. A little later 
one heard that Sherard had seen him, and brought 
about a reconciliation with his wife. Mrs. 
Wilde had been very good and had gone to the 
prison and had no doubt comforted him. Much 
tobe hopedtrom all thisi 20... 

For months and months the situation in 
South Africa took all my heart and mind. 

In the first days of January, 1896, came the 
Jameson Raid, and I sailed for South Africa. 
I had work to do for The Saturday Review, ab- 
sorbing work by day and night. In the summer 
I was back in England, but the task of defend- 
ing the Boer farmers grew more and more ardu- 


OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 327 


ous, and I only heard that Oscar was going on 
as well as could be expected. 

Some time later, after he had been transferred 
to Reading Gaol, bad news leaked out, news that 
he was breaking up, was being punished, per- 
secuted. His friends came to me, asking: could 
anything be done? As usual my only hope was 
in the supreme authority. Sir Evelyn Ruggles 
Brise was the head of the Prison Commission; 
after the Home Secretary, the most powerful 
person, the permanent official behind the Parlia- 
mentary figure-head; the man who knew and 
acted behind the man who talked. I sat down 
and wrote to him for an interview: by return 
came a courteous note giving me an appoint- 
ment. 

I told him what I had heard about Oscar, that 
his health was breaking down and his reason 
going, pointed out how monstrous it was to turn 
prison into a torture-chamber. ‘To my utter 
astonishment he agreed with me, admitted, even, 
that an exceptional man ought to have excep- 
tional treatment; showed not a trace of pedantry; 
good brains, good heart. He went so far as to 
say that Oscar Wilde should be treated with all 
possible consideration, that certain prison rules 
which pressed very hardly upon him should be 
interpreted as mildly as possible. He admitted 
that the punishment was much more severe to 


328 OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 


him than it would be to an ordinary criminal, 
and had nothing but admiration for his brilliant 
gifts. 

“Tt was a great pity,” he said, “that Wilde 
ever got into prison, a great pity.” 

I was pushing at an open door; besides the year 
or so which had elapsed since the condemnation 
had given time for reflection. Still, Sir Ruggles 
Brise’s attitude was extraordinary, sympathetic 
at once and high-minded: another true English- 
man at the head of affairs: infinite hope in that 
fact, and solace. 

I had stuck to my text that something should 
be done at once to give Oscar courage and hope; 
he must not be murdered or left to despair. 

Sir Ruggles Brise asked me finally if I would 
go to Reading and report on Oscar Wilde’s 
condition and make any suggestion that might 
occur to me. He did not know if this could be 
arranged; but he would see the Home Secretary 
and would recommend it, if I were willing. 
Of course I was willing, more than willing. 
Two or three days later, | got another letter 
from him with another appointment, and again 
I went to see him. He received me with charm- 
ing kindness. The Home Secretary would be 
glad if I would go down to Reading and report 
on Oscar Wilde’s state. | 

“Everyone,” said Sir Ruggles Brise, “speaks 


OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 329 


with admiration and delight of his wonderful 
talents. The Home Secretary thinks it would 
be a great loss to English literature if he were 
really injured by the prison discipline. Here 
is your order to see him alone, and a word of 
introduction to the Governor, and a request to 
give you all information.” 

I could not speak. I could only shake hands 
with him in silence. 

What a country of anomalies England is! A 
judge of the High Court a hard self-satisfied per- 
nicious bigot, while the official in charge of the 
prisons is a man of wide culture and humane 
views, who has the courage of a noble humanity. 

I went to Reading Gaol and sent in my letter. 
I was met by the Governor, who gave orders 
that Oscar Wilde should be conducted to a room 
where we could talk alone. I cannot give an 
account of my interviews with the Governor or 
the doctor; it would smack of a breach of confi- 
dence; besides all such conversations are pecul- 
iarly personal: some people call forth the best 
in us, others the worst. Without wishing to, I 
-may have stirred up the lees. I can only say here 
that I then learned for the first time the full, 
incredible meaning of “‘Man’s inhumanity to 
man.” 

In a quarter of an hour I was led into a 
bare room where Oscar Wilde was already stand- 


330 OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 


ing by a plain deal table. The warder who had 
come with him then left us. We shook hands 
and sat down opposite to each other. He had 
changed greatly. He appeared much older; his 
dark brown hair was streaked with grey, par- 
ticularly in front and over the ears. He was 
much thinner, had lost at least thirty-five 
pounds, probably forty or more. On the whole, 
however, he looked better physically than he 
had looked for years before his imprisonment: 
his eyes were clear and bright; the outlines of 
the face were no longer swamped in fat; the 
voice even was ringing and musical; he had 
improved bodily, I thought; though in repose his 
face wore a nervous, depressed and harassed air. 
“You know how glad I am to see you, heart- 
glad to find you looking so well,” I began, “but 
tell me quickly, for I may be able to help you, what 
have you to complain of; what do you want?” 
For a long time he was too hopeless, too 
frightened to talk. “The list of my grievances,” 
he said, “‘would be without end. The worst 
of it is I am perpetually being punished for 
nothing; this governor loves to punish, and he 
punishes by taking my books from me. It is 
perfectly awful to let the mind grind itself away 
between the upper and nether millstones of re- 
gret and remorse without respite; with books my 
life would be livable—any life,” he added sadly. 


OSCAR WILDE AND HI8 CONFESSIONS 3351 


“The life, then, is hard. Tell me about it.”’ 

**I don’t like to,”’ he said, “‘it is all so dreadful 
—and ugly and painful, I would rather not think 
of it,” and he turned away despairingly. 

“You must tell me, or I shall not be able to 
help you.” Bit by bit I won the confession from 
him. 

“At first it was a fiendish nightmare; more 
horrible than anything I had ever dreamt of; 
from the first evening when they made me un- 
dress before them and get into some filthy water 
they called a bath and dry myself with a damp, 
brown rag and put on this livery of shame. The 
cell was appalling: I could hardly breathe in it, 
and the food turned my stomach; the smell and 
sight of it were enough: I did not eat anything 
for days and days, I could not even swallow the 
bread; and the rest of the food was uneatable; I 
lay on the so-called bed and shivered all night 
11) Pee aay apa Poni ask meé / to *speak, of it; 
please. Words cannot convey the cumulative 
effect of a myriad discomforts, brutal handling 
and slow starvation. Surely like Dante I have 
written on my face the fact that I have been in 
hell. Only Dante never imagined any hell like 
an English prison; in his lowest circle people 
could move about; could see each other, and hear 
each other groan: there was some change, some 
human companionship in misery. .... 


332 OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 


“When did you begin to eat the food?” Iasked. | 
"1 cant, tell. Prank,’ he<rephed, == Adean 
some days I got so hungry I had to eat a little, 
nibble at the outside of the bread, and drink 
some of the liquid; whether it was tea, coffee or 
gruel, I could not tell. As soon as I really ate 
anything it produced violent diarrhoea and I 
was ill all day and all night. From the begin- 
ning I could not sleep. I grew weak and had 
wild delusions. .... You must not ask me to 
describe it. It is like asking a man who has 
gone through fever to describe one of the ter- 
rifying dreams. At Wandsworth I thought I 
should go mad; Wandsworth is the worst: no 
dungeon in hell can be worse; why is the food so ~ 
bad? Itevensmelt bad. It was not fit for dogs.” 
“Was the food the worst of it?” I asked. 
“The hunger made you weak, Frank; but 
the inhumanity was the worst of it; what devil- 
ish creatures men are. I had never known 
anything about them. I had never dreamt of 
such cruelties. A man spoke to me at exercise. 
You know you are not allowed to speak. He 
was in front of me, and he whispered, so that 
he could not be seen, how sorry he was for me, 
and how he hoped I would bear up. I stretched 
out my hands to him and cried, ‘Oh, thank you, 
thank you.’ The kindness of his voice brought 
tears into my eyes. Of course I was punished 


OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 333 


at once for speaking; a dreadful punishment. 
I won’t think of it: I dare not. They are in- 
finitely cunning in malice here, Frank; infinitely 
cunning in punishment..... Don’t let us 
talk of it, it is too painful, too horrible that 
men should be so brutal.” 

*“*Give me an instance,” I said, “‘of something 
less painful; something which may be bettered.” 

He smiled wanly. ‘All of it, Frank, all of 
it should be altered. There is no spirit in a 
prison but hate, hate masked in degrading for- 
malism. ‘They first break the will and rob you 
of hope, and then rule by fear. One day a warder 
came into my cell. 

** “Take off your boots,’ he said. 

“Of course I began to obey him; then I 
asked: 

“What is it? Why must I take off my 
boots?’ : 

‘““He would not answer me. As soon as he 
had my boots, he said: 

***Come out of your cell.’ 

“*Why?’ I asked again. I was frightened, 
Frank. What had I done? I could not guess; 
but then I was often punished for nothing: 
what was it? No answer. As soon as we were 
in the corridor he ordered me to stand with 
my face to the wall, and went away. There 
I stood in my stocking feet waiting. The 


334. OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 


cold chilled me through; I began standing first 
on one foot and then on the other, racking my 
brains as to what they were going to do to me, 
wondering why I was being punished like this, 
and how long it would last; you know the 
thoughts fear-born that plague the mind..... 
After what seemed an eternity I heard him 
coming back. I did not dare to move or even 
look. He came up to me; stopped by me for 
a moment; my heart stopped; he threw down 
a pair of boots beside me, and said: 

“*Go to your cell and put those on,’ and I 
went into my cell shaking. That’s the way they 
give you a new pair of boots in prison, Frank; 
that’s the way they are kind to you.” 

“The first period was the worst?” I asked. 

“*Oh, yes, infinitely the worst! One gets accus- 
tomed to everything in time, to the food and 
the bed and the silence: one learns the rules, 
and knows what to expect and what to fear... .” 

“How did you win through the first period?” 
I asked. 

“T died,” he said quietly, “‘and came to life 
again, as a patient.”’ I stared at him. “Quite 
true, Frank. What with the purgings and the 
semi-starvation and sleeplessness and, worst of all, 
the regret gnawing at my soul and the incessant 
torturing self-reproaches, I got weaker and weak- 
er; my clothes hung on me; I could scarcely move. 


OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 335 


One Sunday morning after a very bad night I 
could not get out of bed. The warder came 
in and I told‘him I was ill.” 

7. outhad better get°up,’ he said; but I 
couldn’t take the good advice. 

“1 can’t,’ I replied, ‘you must do what you 
like with me.’ 

“Half an hour later the doctor came and 
looked in at the door. He never came near me; 
he simply called out: 

***Get up; no malingering; you’re all right. 
You'll be punished if you don’t get up,’ and he 
went away. 

“T had to get up. I was very weak; I fell off 
my bed while dressing, and bruised myself; but 
I got dressed somehow or other, and then I had 
to go with the rest to chapel, where they sing 
hymns, dreadful hymns all out of tune in praise 
of their pitiless God. 

“T could hardly stand up; everything kept 
disappearing and coming back faintly: and sud- 
Menmiy |) must have fallen. .... 7 Te. put ens 
hand to his head. ‘I woke up feeling a pain in 
this ear. I was in the infirmary with a warder 
by me. My hand rested on a clean white sheet; 
it was like heaven. I could not help pushing 
my toes against the sheet to feel it, it was so 
smooth and cool and clean. The nurse with kind 
eyes said to me: 


336 OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 


““ “Do eat something,’ and gave me some thin 
white bread and butter. Frank, I shall never 
forget it. The water came into my mouth in 
streams; I was so desperately hungry, and it 
was so delicious; I was so weak I cried,” and he 
put his hands before his eyes and gulped down 
his tears. 

“T shall never forget it: the warder was so 
kind. I did not like to tell him I was famished; 
but when he went away I picked the crumbs 
off the sheet and ate them, and when I could 
find no more I pulled myself to the edge of the 
bed, and picked up the crumbs from the floor 
and ate those as well; the white bread was so 
good and I was so hungry.” 

“And now?” I asked, not able to stand more. 

“Oh, now,” he said, with an attempt to be 
cheerful, ‘“‘of course it would be all right if 
they did not take my books away from me. If 
they would let me write. If only they would 
let me write as I wish, I should be quite con- 
tent, but they punish me on every pretext. 
Why do they do it, Frank? Why do they want 
to make my life here one long misery?” 

*“Aren’t you a little deaf still?’? I asked, to 
ease the passion I felt of intolerable pity. 

“Yes,” he replied, “on this side, where I fell 
in the chapel. I fell on my ear, you know, and 
I must have burst the drum of it, or injured 


OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 337 


it in some way, for all through the winter it 
has ached and it often bleeds a little.” 

“But they could give you some cotton wool 
or something to put in it?” I said. 

He smiled a poor wan smile: 

“If you think one dare disturb a doctor or a 
warder for an earache, you don’t know much 
about a prison; you would pay for it. Why, 
Frank, however ill I was now,” and he lowered 
his voice to a whisper and glanced about him 
as if fearing to be overheard, “‘however ill I 
was I would not think of sending for the doctor. 
Not think of it,” he said in an awestruck voice. 
“I have learned prison ways.” 

*‘T should rebel,” I cried; “‘why do you let 
it break the spirit?” 

“You would soon be broken, if you rebelled, 
here. Besides it is all incidental to the System. 
The System! No one outside knows what that 
means. It is an old story, I’m afraid, the story 
of man’s cruelty to man.” 

Pa thinks bcan promise you,’ | said, “that 
the System will be altered a little. You shall 
have books and things to write with, and you 
shall not be harassed every moment by punish- 
ment.” 

“Take care,’ he cried in a spasm of dread, 
putting his hand on mine, “take care, they 
may punish me much worse. You don’t know 


338 OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 


what they can do.” I grew hot with indigna- 
tion. 

“Don’t say anything, please, of what I have 
said to you. Promise me, you won’t say any- 
thing. Promise me. I never complained, I 
didn’t.”” His excitement was a revelation. 

“All right,” I replied, to soothe him. 

“No, but promise me, seriously,” he re- 
peated. ‘‘You must promise me. ‘Think, you 
have my confidence, it is private what I have 
said.”” He was evidently frightened out of self- 
control. 

‘All right,” “DL said, “I°willmotteleibureioe 
get the facts from the others and not from 
you.” 

“Oh, Frank,” he said, ““you don’t know what 
they do. There is a punishment here more 
terrible than the rack.’”? And he whispered to 
me with white sidelong eyes: “They can drive 
you mad in a week, Frank.’”! 

“Mad!” I exclaimed, thinking I must have 
misunderstood him; though he was white and 
trembling. 


1 He was referring, I suppose, to the solitary confinement in a dark cell, 
which English ingenuity has invented and according to all accounts is as 
terrible as any of the tortures of the past. For those tortures were all 
physical, whereas the modern Englishman addresses himself to the brain 
and nerves, and finds the fear of madness more terrifying than the fear 
of pain. What a pity it is that Mr. Justice Wills did not know twenty- 
four hours of it, just twenty-four hours to teach him what “adequate 
punishment” for sensual self-indulgence means, and adequate punish- 
ment, too, for inhuman cruelty. 


OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 339 


“What about the warders?” I asked again, 
to change the subject, for I began to feel that 
I had supped full on horrors. 

““Some of them are kind,” he sighed. ‘The 
one that brought me in here is so kind to me. 
I should like to do something for him, when I 
get out. He’s quite human. He does not mind 
talking to me and explaining things; but some 
of them at Wandsworth were brutes..... I 
will not think of them again. I have sewn those 
pages up and you must never ask me to open 
@iem again: | dare not open them,” he cried 
pitifully. 

“But you ought to tell it all,” I said, “that’s 
perhaps the purpose you are here for: the ulti- 
mate reason.” 

“Oh, no, Frank, never. It would need a 
man of infinite strength to come here and give 
a truthful record of all that happened to him. 
I don’t believe you could do it; I don’t believe 
anybody would be strong enough. Starvation 
and purging alone would break down anyone’s 
strength. Everybody knows that you are 
purged and starved to the edge of death. 
That’s what two years’ hard labour means. It’s 
not the labour that’s hard. It’s the conditions 
of life that make it impossibly hard: they break 
you down body and soul. And if you resist, 
fey diive you crazy. ..’. But, please! don't 


340 OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 


say I said anything; you’ve promised, you know 
you have: you’ll remember: won’t you!” 

I felt guilty: his insistence, his gasping fear 
showed me how terribly he must have suffered. 
He was beside himself with dread. I ought to 
have visited him sooner. I changed the subject. 

“You shall have writing materials and your 
books, Oscar. Force yourself to write. You are 
looking better than you used to look; your eyes 
are brighter, your face clearer.” The old smile 
came back into his eyes, the deathless humour. 

“T’ve had a rest cure, Frank,’’ he said, and 
smiled feebly. 

“You should give record of this life as far 
as you can, and of all its influences on you. 
You have conquered, you know. Write the 
names of the inhuman brutes on their foreheads 
in vitriol, as Dante did for all time.” 

“No, no, I cannot: I will not: I want to live 
and forget. I could not, I dare not, I have not 
Dante’s strength, nor his bitterness; 1 am a 
Greek born out of due time.” He had said the 
true word at last. 

“T will come again and see you,” I replied. 
“Is there nothing else I can do? I hear your 
wife has seen you. I hope you have made it up 
with her?” 

“She tried to be kind to me, Frank,” he said 
in a dull voice, “‘she was kind, I suppose. She 


OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 341 


must have suffered; I’m sorry..... One 
felt he had no sorrow to spare for others. 

“Ts there nothing I can do?” I asked. 

“Nothing, Frank, only if you could get me 
books and writing materials, if I could be al- 
lowed to use them really! But you won’t say 
anything I have said to you, you promise me 
you won’t?”’ 

“T promise,” I replied, ‘‘and I shall come 
back in a short time to see you again. I think 
you will be better then. .... 

“Don’t dread the coming out; you have friends 
who will work for you, great allies oasis ee | 
told him about Lady Dorothy Nevill at Mrs. 
Jeune’s lunch. 

“Isn’t she a dear old lady?” he cried, “‘ charm- 
ing, brilliant, human creature! She might have 
stepped out of a page of Thackeray, only Thack- 
eray never wrote a page quite dainty and charm- 
ing enough. He came near it in his ‘Esmond.’ 
Oh, I remember you don’t like the book, but 
it is beautifully written, Frank, in beautiful 
simple rhythmic English. It sings itself to the 
ear. Lady Dorothy” (how he loved the title!) 
“was always kind to me, but London is horrible. 
I could not live in London again. I must go 
away out of England. Do you remember talk- 
ing to me, Frank, of France?” and he put both 
his hands on my shoulders, while tears ran 


342 OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 


down his face, and sighs broke from him. 
“Beautiful France, the one country in the world 
where they care for humane ideals and the hu- 
mane life. Ah! if only I had gone with you to 
France,” and the tears poured down his cheeks 
and our hands met convulsively. 

“I’m glad to see you looking so well,” I 
began again. ‘‘ Books you shall have; for God’s 
sake keep your heart up, and I will come back 
and see you, and don’t forget you have good 
friends outside; lots of us!” 

“Thank you, Frank; but take care, won’t 
you, and remember your promise not to tell.” 

I nodded in assent and went to the door. 
The warder came in. 

“The interview is over,” I said; “‘will you 
take me downstairs?”’ 

“Tf you will not mind sitting here, sir,” he 
said, “‘fora minute. I must take him back first.” 

“T have been telling my friend,” said Oscar 
to the warder, “how good you have been to me,”’ 
and he turned and went, leaving with me the 
memory of his eyes and unforgettable smile; 
but I noticed as he disappeared that he was 
thin, and looked hunched up and bowed, in the 
ugly ill-fitting prison livery. I took out a bank 
note and put it under the blotting paper that 
had been placed on the table for me. In two or | 
three minutes the warder came back, and as I 


OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 343 


deft the room I thanked him for being kind to my 
friend, and told him how kindly Oscar had 
spoken of him. 

“‘He has no business here, sir,” the warder 
said. ‘‘He’s no more like one of our reg’lars 
than a canary is like one of them cocky little 
spadgers. Prison ain’t meant for such as him, 
and he ain’t meant for prison. He’s that soft, 
sir, you see, and affeckshunate. He’s more like 
a woman, he is; you hurt ’em without meaning 
to. I don’t care what they say, I likes him; 
and he do talk beautiful, sir, don’t he?” 

“Indeed he does,” I said, ‘‘the best talker 
in the world. I want you to look in the pad 
on the table. I have left a note there for you.” 

“Not for me, sir, I could not take it; no, sir, 
please not,” he cried in a hurried, fear-struck 
voice. “‘You’ve forgotten something, sir, come 
back and get it, sir, do, please. I daren’t.” 

In spite of my remonstrance he took me back 
and I had to put the note in my pocket. 

“I could not, you know, sir, I was not kind 
to him for that.” His manner changed; he 
seemed hurt. 

I told him I was sure of it, sure, and begged 
him to believe, that if I were able to do anything 
for him, at any time, I’d be glad, and gave him 
my address. He was not even listening—an 
honest, good man, full of the milk of human 


99 


344 OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 


kindness. How kind deeds shine starlike in 
this prison of a world. ‘That warder and Sir 
Ruggles Brise each in his own place: such men 
are the salt of the English world; better are not 
to be found on earth. 


CHAPTER XVIII 


On my return to London I saw Sir Ruggles 
Brise. No one could have shown me warmer 
sympathy, or more discriminating comprehen- 
sion. J made my report to him and left the 
matter in his hands with perfect confidence. 
I took care to describe Oscar’s condition to his 
friends while assuring them that his circum- 
stances would soon be bettered. A little later I 
heard that the governor of the prison had been 
changed, that Oscar had got books and writing 
materials, and was allowed to have the gas burn- 
ing in his cell to a late hour when it was turned 
down but not out. In fact, from that time on he 
was treated with all the kindness possible, and 
soon we heard that he was bearing the confine- 
ment and discipline better than could have been 
expected. Sir Evelyn Ruggles Brise had evi- 
dently settled the difficulty in the most humane 
spirit. 

Later still I was told that Oscar had begun 
to write “De Profundis” in prison, and I was 
very hopeful about that too: no news could have 
given me greater pleasure. It seemed to me cer- 
tain that he would justify himself to men by 

345 


346 OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 


turning the punishment into a stepping-stone. 
And in this belief when the time came I ventured 
to call on Sir Ruggles Brise with another petition. 

“Surely,” I said, “Oscar will not be impris- 
oned for the full term; surely four or five months 
for good conduct will be remitted?”’ 

Sir Ruggles Brise listened sympathetically, but 
warned me at once that any remission was 
exceptional; however, he would let me know 
what could be done, if I would call again in a 
week. Much to my surprise, he did not seem 
certain even about the good conduct. 

I returned at the end of the week, and had 
another long talk with him. He told me that 
good conduct meant, in prison parlance, ab- 
sence of punishment, and Oscar had been pun- 
ished pretty often. Of course his offenses were 
minor offenses; nothing serious; childish faults 
indeed for the most part: he was often talking, 
and he was often late in the morning; his cell 
was not kept so well as it might be, and so forth; 
peccadilloes, all; yet a certificate of “good con- 
duct”’ depended on such trifling observances. In 
face of Oscar’s record Sir Ruggles Brise did not 
think that the sentence would be easily lessened. 
I was thunder-struck. But then no rules to me 
are sacro-sanct; indeed, they are only tolerable 
because of the exceptions. I had such a high 
opinion of Ruggles Brise—his kindness and sense 


OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 43447 


of fair play—that I ventured to show him my 
whole mind on the matter. 

“Oscar Wilde,” I said to him, “‘is just about 
to face life again: he is more than half reconciled 
to his wife; he has begun a book, is shouldering 
the burden. A little encouragement now and | 
believe he will do better things than he has 
ever done. I am convinced that he has far 
bigger things in him than we have seen yet. 
But he is extraordinarily sensitive and extraor- 
dinarily vain. The danger is that he may be 
frightened and blighted by the harshness and 
hatred of the world. He may shrink into him- 
self and do nothing if the wind be not tempered 
a little for him. A hint of encouragement now, 
the feeling that men like yourself think him 
worthful and deserving of special kindly treat- 
ment, and I feel certain he will do great things. 
I really believe it is in your hands to save a man 
of extraordinary talent, and get the best out of 
him, if you care to do it.” 

“Of course | care to do it,” he cried. “You 
cannot doubt that, and I see exactly what you 
mean; but it will not be easy.” 

““Won’t you see what can be done?” I per- 
sisted. “Put your mind to discover how it 
should be done, how the Home Secretary may 
be induced to remit the last few months of 
Wilde’s sentence.” 


348 OSCAR WILDE AND HIS) CONFESSIONS 


After a little while he replied: 

““You must believe that the authorities are 
quite willing to help in any good work, more 
than willing, and I am sure I speak for the Home 
Secretary as well as for myself; but it is for you 
to give us some reason for acting—a reason 
that could be avowed and defended.” 

I did not at first catch his drift; so I perse- 
vered: 3 

“You admit that the reason exists, that it 
would be a good thing to favour Wilde, then 
why not do it?” 

“We live,” he said, “under parliamentary 
rule. Suppose the question were asked in the 
House, and I think it very likely in the present — 
state of public opinion that the question would be 
asked: what should we answer? It would not be 
an avowable reason that we hoped Wilde would 
write new plays and books, would it? That rea- 
son ought to be sufficient, I grant you; but, you 
see yourself, it would not be so regarded.” 

“You are right, I suppose,”’ I had to admit. 
“But if I got you a petition from men of letters, 
asking you to release Wilde for his health’s sake: 
would that do?” 

Sir Ruggles Brise jumped at the suggestion. 

“Certainly,” he exclaimed, “if some men of 
letters, men of position, wrote asking that 
Wilde’s sentence should be diminished by three 


OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 349 


or four months on account of his health, I think 
it would have the best effect.” 

-“1 will see Meredith at once,” I said, “‘and 
some others. How many names should I get?” 

“Tf you have Meredith,” he replied, ‘“‘you 
don’t need many others. A dozen would do, 
or fewer if you find a dozen too many.” 

“T don’t think I shall meet with any diffi- 
culty,” I replied, “but I will let you know.” 

“You will find it harder than you think,” he 
concluded, “‘but if you get one or two great 
names the rest may follow. In any case one or 
two good names will make it easier for you.” 

Naturally I thanked him for his kindness 
and went away absolutely content. I had never 
set myself a task which seemed simpler. Mere- 
dith could not be more merciless than a Royal 
Commission. I returned to my office in The 
Saturday Review and got the Royal Commission 
report on this sentence of two years’ imprison- 
ment with hard labour. ‘The Commission rec- 
ommended that it should be wiped off the 
Statute Book as too severe. I drafted a little 
petition as colourless as possible: 

“In view of the fact that the punishment of 
two years’ imprisonment with hard labour has 
been condemned by a Royal Commission as too 
severe, and inasmuch as Mr. Wilde has been 
distinguished by his work in letters and is now, 


350 OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 


we hear, suffering in health, we, your petitioners, 
pray—and so forth and so on.” 

I got this printed, and then sat down to write 
to Meredith asking when I could see him on the 
matter. I wanted his signature first to be printed 
underneath the petition, and then issue it. To 
my astonishment Meredith did not answer at 
once, and when I pressed him and set forth 
the facts he wrote to me that he could not do 
what I wished. I wrote again, begging him to 
let me see him on the matter. For the first 
time in my life he refused to see me: he wrote 
to me to say that nothing I could urge would 
move him, and it would therefore only be painful 
to both of us to find ourselves in conflict. 

Nothing ever surprised me more than this 
attitude of Meredith’s. I knew his poetry pretty 
well, and knew how severe he was on every sen- 
sual weakness perhaps because it was his own 
pitfall. I knew too what a fighter he was at heart 
and how he loved the virile virtues; but I thought 
I knew the man, knew his tender kindliness of 
heart, the founts of pity in him, and I felt certain 
I could count on him for any office of human 
charity or generosity. But no, he was impene- 
trable, hard. He told me long afterwards that he 
had rather a low opinion of Wilde’s capacities, in- 
stinctive, deep-rooted contempt, too, for the show- 
man in him, and an absolute abhorrence of his vice. 


¢ - 


OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 451 


“That vile, sensual self-indulgence puts back 
the hands of the clock,” he said, “and should 
not be forgiven.” 

For the life of me I could never forgive Mere- 
dith; never afterwards was he of any importance 
to me. He had always been to me a standard 
bearer in the eternal conflict, a leader in the 
Liberation War of Humanity, and here I found 
him pitiless to another who had been wounded 
on the same side in the great struggle: it seemed 
to me appalling. True, Wilde had not been 
wounded in fighting for us; true, he had fallen 
out and come to grief, as a drunkard might. 
But after all he had been fighting on the right 
side: had been a quickening intellectual influ- 
ence: it was dreadful to pass him on the wayside 
and allow him callously to bleed to death. It 
was revoltingly cruel! ‘The foremost English- 
man of his time unable even to understand 
Christ’s example, much less reach his height! 

This refusal of Meredith’s not only hurt me, 
but almost destroyed my hope, though it did 
not alter my purpose. I wanted a figurehead 
for my petition, and the figurehead I had 
chosen [ could not get. I began to wonder 
and doubt. I next approached a very different 
man, the late Professor Churton Collins, a great 
friend of mine, who, in spite of an almost pedan- 
tic rigour of mind and character, had in him 


352 OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 


at bottom a curious spring of sympathy—a 
little pool of pure love for the poets and writers 
whom he admired. I got him to dinner and 
asked him to sign the petition; he refused, but 
on grounds other than those taken by Meredith. 

“Of course Wilde ought to get out,” he said, 
“the sentence was a savage one and showed 
bitter prejudice; but I have children, and my 
own way to make in the world, and if I did this 
I should be tarred with the Wilde brush. I 
cannot afford to doit. If he were really a great 
man I hope I should do it, but I don’t agree 
with your estimate of him. I cannot think I 
am called upon to bell the British cat in his 
defence: it has many claws and all sharp.” 

As soon as he saw the position was unworthy 
of him, he shifted to new ground. 

“If you were justified in coming to me, I 
should do it; but I am no one; why don’t you 
go to Meredith, Swinburne or Hardy?” 

I had to give up the Professor, as well as the 
poet. I knocked in turn at a great many doors, 
but all in vain. No one wished to take the 
odium on himself. One man, since become cele- 
brated, said he had no position, his name was 
not good enough for the purpose. Others left 
my letters unanswered. Yet another sent a bare 
acknowledgment saying how sorry he was, but 
that public opinion was against Mr. Wilde; 


OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 353 


with one accord they all made excuses. .... 

One day Professor Tyrrell of Trinity College, 
Dublin, happened to be in my office, while I 
was setting forth the difference between men 
of letters in France and England as éxemplified 
by this conduct. In France among authors 
there is a recognised “esprit de corps,” which 
constrains them to hold together. For instance 
when Zola was threatened with prosecution 
for “‘Nana,”’ a dozen men like Cherbuliez, 
Feuillet, Dumas jfi/s, who hated his work and 
regarded it as sensational, tawdry, immoral 
even, took up the cudgels for him at once; de- 
clared that the police were not judges of art, 
and should not interfere with a serious work- 
man. All these Frenchmen, though they dis- 
liked Zola’s work, and believed that his popu- 
larity was won by a low appeal, still admitted 
that he was a force in letters, and stood by him 
resolutely in spite of their own prepossessions 
and prejudices. But in England the feeling is 
altogether more selfish. Everyone consults his 
own sordid self-interest and is rather glad to see 
a social favourite come to grief: not a hand is 
stretched out to help him. Suddenly, Tyrrell 
broke in upon my exposition: 

“T don’t know whether my name is of any good 
to you,” he said, “but I agree with all you have 
said, and my name might be classed with that 


354 OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 


of Churton Collins, though, of course, I’ve no 
right to speak for literature,” and without more 
ado he signed the petition, adding, “ Regius 
Professor of Greek at Trinity College, Dublin.” 

“When you next see Oscar,” he continued, 
“please tell him that my wife and I asked after 
him. We both hold him in grateful memory 
as a most brilliant talker and writer, and a 
charming fellow to boot. Confusion take all 
their English Puritanism.” } 

Merely living in Ireland tends to make an 
Englishman more humane; but one name was 
not enough, and Tyrrell’s was the only one I 
could get. In despair, and knowing that George 
Wyndham had had a great liking for Oscar, and — 
admiration for his high talent, I asked him to 
lunch at the Savoy; laid the matter before him, 
and begged him to give me his name. He re- 
fused, and in face of my astonishment he excused 
himself by saying that, as soon as the rumour 
had reached him of Oscar’s intimacy with Bosie 
Douglas, he had asked Oscar whether there 
was any truth in the scandalous report. 

“You see,” he went on, “Bosie is by way of 
being a relation of mine, and so I had the right 
to ask. Oscar gave me his word of honour that 
there was nothing but friendship between them. 
He hed to me, and that I can never forgive.” 

A politician unable to forgive a lie—surely 


OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 355 


one can hear the mocking laughter of the gods! 
I could say nothing to such paltry affected 
nonsense. Politician-like Wyndham showed me 
how the wind of popular feeling blew, and I 
recognised that my efforts were in vain. 

There is no fellow-feeling among English 
men of letters; in fact they hold together less 
than any other class and, by himself, none of 
them wished to help a wounded member of the 
flock. I had to tell Sir Ruggles Brise that I had 
failed. 

I have been informed since that if I had 
begun by asking Thomas Hardy, I might have 
succeeded. I knew Hardy; but never cared 
greatly for his talent. I daresay if I had had 
nothing else to do I might have succeeded in 
some half degree. But all these two years I was 
extremely busy and anxious; the storm clouds 
in South Africa were growing steadily darker 
and my attitude to South African affairs was 
exceedingly unpopular in London. It seemed 
to me vitally important to prevent England 
from making war on the Boers. I had to aban- 
don the attempt to get Oscar’s sentence short- 
ened, and comfort myself with Sir Ruggles 
Brise’s assurance that he would be treated with 


the greatest possible consideration. 


Still, my advocacy had had a good effect. 
Oscar himself has told us what the kindness 


356 OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 


shown to him in the last six months of his prison 
life really did for him. He writes in De Profundis 
that for the first part of his sentence he could 
only wring his hands in impotent despair and 
cry, ““What an ending, what an appalling end- 
ing!”? But when the new spirit of kindness came 
to him, he could say with sincerity: “What a 
beginning, what a wonderful beginning!” He 
sums it all up in these words: 

“Had I been released after eighteen months, 
as I hoped to be, I would have left my prison 
loathing it and every official in it with a bitter- 
ness of hatred that would have poisoned my life. 
I have had six months more of imprisonment, 
but humanity has been in the prison with us all 
the time, and now when I go out I shall always 
remember great kindnesses that I have received 
here from almost everybody, and on the day of 
my release I shall give many thanks to many 
people, and ask to be remembered by them in 
turn.” 

This is the man whom Mr. Justice Wills ad- 
dressed as insensible to any high appeal. 

Some time passed before I visited Oscar again. 
The change in him was extraordinary. He was 
light-hearted, gay, and looked better than I had 
ever seen him: clearly the austerity of prison life 
suited him. He met me with a jest: 

“Tt is you, Frank!” he cried as if astonished, 


OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS, 357 


“always original! You come back to prison of 
your own free-will!”’ 

_ He declared that the new governor—Major 
Nelson! was his name—had been as kind as pos- 
sible to him. He had not had a punishment for 
months, and “Oh, Frank, the joy of reading 
when you like and writing as you please—the 
delight of living again!”? He was so infinitely 
improved that his talk delighted me. 

“What books have you?” I asked. 

*“T thought I should like the ‘Cidipus Rex,’”’ 
he replied gravely; “‘but I could not read it. It 
all seemed unreal to me. ‘Then I thought of St. 
Augustine, but he was worse still. ‘The fathers 
of the Church were still further away from me; 
they all found it so easy to repent and change 
their lives: it does not seem to me easy. At 
last I got hold of Dante. Dante was what I 
wanted. I read the ‘Purgatorio’ all through, 
forced myself to read it in Italian to get the 
full savour and significance of it. Dante, too, 
had been in the depths and drunk the bitter 
lees of despair. I shall want a little library when 
I come out, a library of a score of books. I 
wonder if you will help me to get it. I want 
Flaubert, Stevenson, Baudelaire, Maeterlinck, 
Dumas pere, Keats, Marlowe, Chatterton, Ana- 
tole France, Theophile Gautier, Dante, Goethe. 

1Cfr. Appendix: “Criticisms by Robert Ross.” 


358 OSCAR WILDE AND HIS‘CONFESSIONS 


Meredith’s poems, and his ‘ Egoist,’ the Song of 
Solomon, too, Job, and, of course, the Gospels.” 
“IT shall be delighted to get them for you,” I 
said, “if you will send me the list. By the by, I 
hear that you have been reconciled to your wife; 
isthattrue? I should be glad to know it’s true.” 
“T hope it will be all right,” he said gravely, 
“she is very good and kind. I suppose you 
have heard,” he went on, “that my mother 
died since I came here, and that leaves a great 
gap in my life. . . . . I always had the greatest 
admiration and love for my mother. She was 
a great woman, Frank, a perfect idealist. My 
father got into trouble once in Dublin, perhaps 
you have heard about it?” 
“Oh, yes,’ I said; “I have read the case= 
(It is narrated in the first chapter of this book.) 
“Well, Frank, she stood up in court and bore 
witness for him with perfect serenity, with per- 
fect trust and without a shadow of common 
womanly jealousy. She could not believe that 
the man she loved could be unworthy, and her 
conviction was so complete that it communi- 
cated itself to the jury: her trust was so noble 
that they became infected by it, and brought 
him in guiltless... Extraordinary, was it not? 


1T give Oscar’s view of the trial just to show how his romantic 
imagination turned disagreeable facts into pleasant fiction. Oscar 
could only have heard of the trial, and perhaps his mother was his in- 
formant—which adds to the interest of the story. 


oman 


yr 


e W 


oun 


de-as aY 


il 


Lady W 


bel 


Za 


al 


“Sper 


\ 
OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 359 


She was quite sure too of the verdict. It is 
only noblé souls who have that assurance and 
a ae 

“When my father was dying it was the same 
thing. I always see her sitting there by his 
bedside with a sort of dark veil over her head: 
quite silent, quite calm. Nothing ever troubled 
her optimism. She believed that only good can 
happen to us. When death came to the man 
she loved, she accepted it with the same serenity 
and when my sister died she bore it in the same 
high way. My sister was a wonderful creature, 
so gay and high-spirited, ‘embodied sunshine,’ 
I used to call her. 

“When we lost her, my mother simply took 
it that it was best for the child. Women have 
infinitely more courage than men, don’t you 
think? I have never known anyone with such 
perfect faith as my mother. She was one of 
the great figures of the world. What she must 
have suffered over my sentence I don’t dare to 
think: I’m sure she endured agonies. She had 
great hopes of me. When she was told that she 
was going to die, and that she could not see me, 
for I was not allowed to go to her,! she said, 
‘May the prison help him,’ and turned her face 
to the wall. 


1 Permission to visit a dying mother is accorded in France, even to 
murderers. The English pretend to be more religious than the French; 
but are assuredly less humane. 


360 OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 


“She felt about the prison as you do, Frank, 
and really I think you are both right; it has 
helped me. There are things I see now that I 
never saw before. I see what pity means. I 
thought a work of art should be beautiful and 
joyous. But now I see that that ideal is in- 
sufficient, even shallow; a work of art must be 
founded on pity; a book or poem which has no 
pity in it, had better not be written. .... 

“T shall be very lonely when I come out, and I 
can’t stand loneliness and solitude; it is intolera- 
ble to me, hateful, I have had too much ofit.... 

“You see, Frank, I am breaking with the past 
altogether. I am going to write the history | 
of it. I am going to tell how I was tempted 
and fell, how I was pushed by the man I loved 
into that dreadful quarrel of his, driven forward 
to the fight with his father and then left to 
suffer alone: .'. . . 

“That is the story I am now going to tell. 
That is the book’ of pity and of love which I 
am writing now—a terrible book. .... 

“{T wonder would you publish it, Frank? I 
should like it to appear in The Saturday.” 

“Vd be delighted to publish anything of 
yours,” I replied, ‘“‘and happier still to publish 
something to show that you have at length 


1 “Te Profundis.” What Oscar called ‘the terrible part” of the book 
—the indictment of Lord Alfred Douglas—has since been read out in 
Court and will be found in the Appendix to this volume. ~ 


OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 361 


chosen the better part and are beginning a new 
life. Id pay you, too, whatever the work turns 
out to be worth to me; in any case much more 
than I pay Bernard Shaw or anyone else.” I 
said this to encourage him. 

*““1’m sure of that,” he answered. “I?ll send 
you the book as soon as I’ve finished it. I think 
you ll like it”—-and there for the moment the 
matter ended. 

At length I felt sure that all would be well 
with him. How could I help feeling sure? His 
mind was richer and stronger than it had ever 
been; and he had broken with all the dark past. 
I was overjoyed to believe that he would yet 

do greater things than he had ever done, and 

this belief and determination were in him too, 
as anyone can see on reading what he wrote 
at this time in prison: 

“There is before me so much to do that I 
would regard it as a terrible tragedy if I died 
before I was allowed to complete at any rate 
alittle of it. I see new developments in art and 
life, each one of which is a fresh mode of per- 
fection. I long to live so that I can explore 
what is no less than a new world to me. Do 
you want to know what this new world is? 
I think you can guess what itis. It is the world 
in which I have been living. Sorrow, then, and 
all that it teaches one, is my new world..... 


362 OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 


“IT used ‘to live entirely) for pleasuresam 
shunned suffering and sorrow of every kind. 
bP hated bothic ec 

Through the prison bars Oscar had begun to 
see how mistaken he had been, how much greater, 
and more salutary to the soul, suffering is than 
pleasure. 

“Out of sorrow have the worlds been built, 
and at the birth of a child or a star there is 
pain.” 


CHAPTER XIX 


SHORTLY before he came out of prison, one of 
Oscar’s intimates told me he was destitute, and 
begged me to get him some clothes. I took the 
name of his tailor and ordered two suits. The 
tailor refused to take the order: he was not 
going to make clothes for Oscar Wilde. I could 
not trust myself to talk to the man and there- 
fore sent my assistant editor and friend, Mr. 
Blanchamp, to have it out with him. The 
tradesman soul yielded to the persuasiveness 
of cash in advance. I sent Oscar the clothes 
and a cheque, and shortly after his release got a 
letter’ thanking me. 

A little later I heard on good authority a 
story which Oscar afterwards confirmed, that 
when he left Reading Gaol the correspondent of 
an American paper offered him £1,000 for an in- 
terview dealing with his prison life and experi- 
ences, but he felt it beneath his dignity to take 
his sufferings to market. He thought it better to 
borrow than toearn. He is partly to be excused, 
perhaps, when one remembers that he had still 
some pounds left of the large sums given him 

1 Reproduced in the Appendix. 
363 


304 OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 


before his condemnation, by Miss S , Ross; 4 
More Adey, and others. Still his refusal of such 
a sum as that offered by the New York paper 
shows how utterly contemptuous he was of 
money, even at a moment when one would have 
thought money would have been his chief pre- 
occupation. He always lived in the day and 
rather heedlessly. 

As soon as he left prison he crossed with some 
friends to France, and went to stay at the Hotel 
de la Plage at Berneval, a quiet little village near 
Dieppe. M. André Gide, who called on him there 
almost as soon as he arrived, gives a fair mental 
picture of him at this time. He tells how de- 
lighted he was to find in him the “Oscar Wilde 
of old,” no longer the sensualist puffed out with 
pride and good living, but “‘the sweet Wilde” 
of the days before 1891. “I found myself taken 
back, not two years,” he says, “‘but four or five. 
There was the same dreamy look, the same 
amused smile, the same voice.” 

He told M. Gide that prison had completely 
changed him, had taught him the meaning of 
pity. “You know,” he went on, “how fond 
I used to be of ‘Madame Bovary,’ but Flaubert 
would not admit pity into his work, and that 
is why it has a petty and restrained character 
about it. It is the sense of pity by means of 
which a work gains in expanse, and by which 


OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 365 


it opens up a boundless horizon. Do you know, 
-my dear fellow, it was pity which prevented 
my killing myself? During the first six months 
in prison I was dreadfully unhappy, so utterly 
miserable that I wanted to kill myself; but what 
kept me from doing so was looking at the others, 
and seeing that they were as unhappy as I was, 
and feeling sorry for them. Oh dear! what a 
wonderful thing pity is, and I never knew it.” 

He was speaking in a low voice without any 
excitement. 

“Flave you ever learned how wonderful a 
thing pity is? For my part I thank God every 
night, yes, on my knees I thank God for having 
taught it tome. I went into prison with a heart 
of stone, thinking only of my own pleasure; but 
now my heart is utterly broken—pity has en- 
tered into my heart. J have learned now that 
pity is the greatest and the most beautiful thing 
in the world. And that is why I cannot bear 
ill-will towards those who caused my suffering 
and those who condemned me; no, nor to anyone, 
because without them I should not have known 
all that. Alfred Douglas writes me terrible 
letters. He says he does not understand me, 
that he does not understand that I do not 
wish everyone ill, and that everyone has been 
horrid to me. No, he does not understand me. 
He cannot understand me any more. But I 


366 OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 


keep on telling him that in every letter: we 
cannot follow the same road. He has his and 
it is beautiful—I have mine. His is that of 
Alcibiades; mine is now that of St. Francis of 
Assisi.” 

How much of this is sincere and how much 
merely imagined and stated in order to incarnate 
the new ideal to perfection would be hard to say. 
The truth is not so saintly simple as the chris- 
tianised Oscar would have us believe. The un- 
published portions of “‘De Profundis” which 
were read out in the Douglas-Ransome trial 
prove, what all his friends know, that Oscar 
Wilde found it impossible to forgive or forget 
what seemed to him personal ill-treatment. 
There are beautiful pages in “De Profundis,” 
pages of sweetest Christlike resignation and 
charity and no doubt in a certain mood Oscar 
Was sincere in writing them. But there was 
another mood in him, more vital and more en- 
during, if not so engaging, a mood in which he 
saw himself as one betrayed and sacrificed and 
abandoned, and then he attributed his ruin 
wholly to his friend and did not hesitate to speak 
of him as the “‘ Judas” whose shallow selfishness 
and imperious ill-temper and unfulfilled prom- 
ises of monetary help had driven a great man to 
disaster. 

That unpublished portion of “De Profundis” 


OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 367 


is in essence, from beginning to end, one long 
curse of Lord Alfred Douglas, an indictment 
apparently impartial, particularly at first; but 
in reality a bitter and merciless accusation, show- 
ing in Oscar Wilde a curious want of sympathy 
even with the man he said he loved. Those who 
would know Oscar Wilde as he really was will 
read that piece of rhetoric with care enough to 
notice that he reiterates the charge of shallow 
selfishness with such venom, that he discovers 
his own colossal egotism and essential hardness 
of heart. “Love,” we are told, “suffereth long 
and is kind .... beareth all things, believeth 
all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things” 
-—that sweet, generous, all-forgiving tenderness 
of love was not in the pagan, Oscar Wilde, and 
therefore even his deepest passion never won to 
complete reconciliation and ultimate redemption. 

In this same talk with M. Gide, Oscar is re- 
ported to have said that he had known before- 
hand that a catastrophe was unavoidable; 
“there was but one end possible. ... That 
state of things could not last; there had to be 
some end to it.” 

This view I believe is Gide’s and not Oscar’s. 
In any case I am sure that my description of 
him before the trials as full of insolent self-as- 
surance is the truer truth. Of course he must 
have had forebodings; he was warned as I’ve 


368 OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 


related, again and again; but he took character- 
colour from his associates and he met Queens- 
berry’s first attempts at attack with utter dis- 
dain. He did not realise his danger at all. Gide 
reports him more correctly as adding: 

“Prison has completely changed me. I was 
relying on it for that—Douglas is terrible. He 
cannot understand that—cannot understand 
that I am not taking up the same existence again. 
He accuses the others of having changed me.” 

I may publish here part of a letter of a prison 
warder which Mr. Stuart Mason reproduced in 
his excellent little book on Oscar Wilde. He says: 


““No more beautiful life had any man lived, — 


no more beautiful life could any man live than 
Oscar Wilde lived during the short period I 
knew him in prison. He wore upon his face 
an eternal smile; sunshine was on his face, sun- 
shine of some sort must have been in his heart. 
People say he was not sincere: he was the very 
soul of sincerity when I knew him. If he did 
not continue that life after he left prison, then 
the forces of evil must have been too strong 
for him. But he tried, he honestly tried, and 
in prison he succeeded.” 

All this seems to me in the main, true. Oscar’s 
gay vivacity would have astonished any stranger. 
Besides, the regular hours and scant plain food of 
prison had improved his health and the solitude 


OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 369 


and suffering had lent him a deeper emotional 
life. But there was an intense bitterness in him, 
a profound underlying sense of injury which came 
continually to passionate expression. Yet as soon 
as the miserable petty persecution of the prison 
was lifted from him, all the joyous gaiety and 
fun of his nature bubbled up irresistibly. There 
was no contradiction in this complexity. A man 
can hold in himself a hundred conflicting passions 
and impulses without confusion. At this time the 
dominant chord in Oscar was pity for others. 

To my delight the world had evidence of this 
changed Oscar Wilde in a very short time. On 
May 28th, a few days after he left prison, there 
appeared in The Daily Chronicle a letter more 
than two columns in length, pleading for the 
kindlier treatment of little children in English 
prisons. The letter was written because Warder 
Martin! of Reading prison had been dismissed 
by the Commissioners for the dreadful crime 
of “having given some sweet biscuits to a little 
manory child,’?s... . 

I must guote a few paragraphs of this letter; 
because it shows how prison had deepened Oscar 
Wilde, how his own suffering had made him, as 


1 Fac-simile copies of some of the notes Oscar wrote to Warder Martin 
about these children are reproduced in the Appendix. The notes were 
written on scraps of paper and pushed under his cell-door; they are among 
the most convincing evidences of Oscar’s essential humanity and kindness 
of heart. 


470 OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 


Shakespeare says, “pregnant to good pity,” and 
also because it tells us what life was like in an 
English prison in our time. Oscar wrote: 

“‘T saw the three children myself on the Mon- 
day preceding my release. They had just been 
convicted, and were standing in a row in the 
central hall in their prison dress carrying their 
sheets under their arms, previous to their being 
sent to the cells allotted to them. .... They 
were quite small children, the youngest—the 
one to whom the warder gave the biscuits— 
being a tiny chap, for whom they had evidently 
been unable to find clothes small enough to fit. 
I had, of course, seen many children in prison 
during the two years during which I was myself 
confined. Wandsworth prison, especially, con- 
tained always a large number of children. But 
the little child I saw on the afternoon of Mon- 
day, the 17th, at Reading, was tinier than any 
one of them. I need not say how utterly dis- 
tressed I was to see these children at Reading, 
for I knew the treatment in store for them. 
The cruelty that is practised by day and night 
on children in English prisons is incredible 
except to those that have witnessed it and are 
aware of the brutality of the system. 

“People nowadays do not understand what 
CYUBILY: c1S.0ni.o Ordinary cruelty is simply 
stupidity. 


OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 371 


“The prison treatment of children is terrible, 
primarily from people not understanding the 
peculiar psychology of the child’s nature. A 
child can understand a punishment inflicted by 
an individual, such as a parent, or guardian, 
and bear it with a certain amount of acquies- 
cence. What it cannot understand is a punish- 
ment inflicted by society. It cannot realise what 
Bomiety is... . 

“The terror of a child in prison is quite limit- 
less. JI remember once in Reading, as I was 
going out to exercise, seeing in the dimly lit 
cell opposite mine a small boy. ‘Two warders 
—not unkindly men—were talking to him, with 
some sternness apparently, or perhaps giving 
him some useful advice about his conduct. 
One was in the cell with him, the other was 
standing outside. ‘The child’s face was like a 
white wedge of sheer terror. ‘There was in his 
eyes the terror of a hunted animal. The next 
morning I heard him at breakfast time crying, 
and calling to be let out. His cry was for his 
parents. From time to time I could hear the 
deep voice of the warder on duty telling him to 
keep quiet. Yet he was not even convicted of 
whatever little offence he had been charged 
with. He was simply on remand. That I 
knew by his wearing his own clothes, which 
seemed neat enough. He was, however, wear- 


372 OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 


ing prison socks and shoes. This showed that 
he was a very poor boy, whose own shoes, if 
he had any, were in a bad state. Justices and 
magistrates, an entirely ignorant class as a 
rule, often remand children for a week, and 
then perhaps remit whatever sentence they are 
entitled to pass. They call this ‘not sending a 
child to prison.’ It is of course a stupid view 
on their part. To a little child, whether he is 
in prison on remand or after conviction is not 
a subtlety of position he can comprehend. To 
him the horrible thing is to be there at all. In 
the eyes of humanity it should be a horrible 
thing for him to be there at all. 

“This terror that seizes and dominates the 
child, as it seizes the grown man also, is of 
course intensified beyond power of expression 
by the solitary cellular system of our prisons. 
Every child is confined to its cell for twenty- 
three hours out of the twenty-four. This is the 
appalling thing. ‘To shut up a child in a dimly 
lit cell for twenty-three hours out of the twenty- 
four is an example of the cruelty of stupidity. 
If an individual, parent or guardian, did this to 
a child, he would be severely punished. .. . 

“The second thing from which a child suffers 
in prison is hunger. The food that is given to 
it consists of a piece of usually badly baked 
prison bread and a tin of water for breakfast 


OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 373 


at half past seven. At twelve o’clock it gets 
_ dinner, composed of a tin of coarse Indian meal 
stirabout, and at half past five it gets a piece 
of dry bread and a tin. of water for its supper. 
This diet in the case of a strong man is always 
productive of illness of some kind, chiefly, of 
course, diarrhoea, with its attendant weakness. 
In fact, in a big prison, astringent medicines 
are served out regularly by the warders as a 
matter of course. A child is as a rule incapable 
of eating the food at all. Anyone who knows 
anything about children knows how easily a 
child’s digestion is upset by a fit of crying, or 
trouble and mental distress of any kind. A 
~ child who has been crying all day long and per- 
haps half the night, in a lonely, dimly lit cell, 
and is preyed upon by terror, simply cannot eat 
food of this coarse, horrible kind. In the case 
of the little child to whom Warder Martin gave 
the biscuits, the child was crying with hunger 
on Tuesday morning, and utterly unable to eat 
the bread and water served to it for breakfast. 

Martin went out after the breakfast had been 
served, and bought the few sweet biscuits for 
the child rather than see it starving. It was 
a beautiful action on his part, and was so 
recognised by the child, who, utterly uncon- 
scious of the regulation of the Prison Board, 
told one of the senior warders how kind this 


374 OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 


junior warder had been to him. The result 
was, of course, a report and a dismissal.’ 

“T know Martin extremely well, and I was 
under his charge for the last seven weeks of my 
imprisonment. .... I was struck by the sin- 
gular kindness and humanity of the way in 
which he spoke to me and to the other pris- 
oners. Kind words are much in prison, and a 
pleasant ‘good-morning’ or ‘good-evening’ will 
make one as happy as one can be in prison. 
He was always gentle and considerate. .... 

‘““A great deal has been talked and written 
lately about the contaminating influence of 
prison on young children. What is said is quite 
true. A child is utterly contaminated by prison 
life. But this contaminating influence is not 
that of the prisoners. It is that of the whole 
prison system—of the governor, the chaplain, the 
warders, the solitary cell, the isolation, the revolt- 
ing food, the rules of the Prison Commissioners, 
the mode of discipline, as it is termed, of the life. 

“‘Of course no child under fourteen years of 
age should be sent to prison at all. It is an 
absurdity, and, like many absurdities, of abso- 
lutely tragical results. . . .”; 


1The Home Secretary, Sir Matthew White Ridley, when questioned 
by Mr. Michael Davitt in the House of Commons, May 25, 1807, 
declared that this dismissal of a warder for feeding a little hungry child 
at his own expense was “‘fully justified” and a “‘proper step.”” This same 
Home Secretary appointed his utterly incompetent brother to be a judge 
of the High Court. 


OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 375 


This letter, | am informed, brought about 
some improvement in the treatment of young 
children in British prisons. But in regard to 
adults the British prison is still the torture 
chamber it was in Wilde’s time; prisoners are 
still treated more brutally there than anywhere 
else in the civilised world; the food is the worst 
in EKurope, insufficient indeed to maintain health; 
in many cases men are only saved from death 
by starvation through being sent to the in- 
firmary. ‘Though these facts are well known, 
Punch, the pet organ of the British middle-class, 
was not ashamed a little while ago to make a 

mock of some suggested reform, by publishing 
a picture of a British convict, with the villainous 
face of a Bill Sykes, lying on a sofa in his cell 
smoking a cigar with champagne at hand. This 
is not altogether due to stupidity, as Oscar tried 
to believe, but to reasoned selfishness. Punch 
and the class for which it caters would like to 
believe that many convicts are unfit to live, 
whereas the truth is that a good many of them 
are superior in humanity to the people who pun- 
ish and slander them. 

While waiting for his wife to join him, Oscar 
rented a little house, the Chalet Bourgeat, about 
two hundred yards away from the hotel at Ber- 
neval, and furnished it. Here he spent the whole 
of the summer writing, bathing, and talking 


376 OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 


to the few devoted friends who visited him from 
time to time. Never had he been so happy: 
never in such perfect health. He was full of lit- 
erary projects; indeed, no period of his whole life 
was so fruitful in good work. He was going to 
write some Biblical plays; one entitled “Pharaoh” 
first, and then one called “‘Ahab and Jezebel,” 
which he pronounced Isabelle. Deeper problems, 
too, were much in his mind: he was already at 
work on “The Ballad of Reading Gaol,” but be- 
fore coming to that let me first show how happy 
the song-bird was and how divinely he sang when 
the dreadful cage was opened and he was allowed 
to use his wings in the heavenly sunshine. 

Here is a letter from him shortly after his re- 
lease which is one of the most delightful things 
he ever wrote. Fitly enough it was addressed 
to his friend of friends, Robert Ross, and I can 
only say that I am extremely obliged to Ross 
for allowing me to publish it: 

Hotel de la Plage. Berneval, near Dieppe, 

Monday night, May 31st (1897). 

My dearest Robbie, 

I have decided that the only way in which 
to get boots properly is to go to France to 
receive them. The Douane charged 3 francs. 
Hou could you frighten me as you did? The 
next time you order boots please come to 
Dieppe to get them sent to you. It is the only 
way and it will be an excuse for seeing you. 


OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 377 


I am going to-morrow on a pilgrimage. 
I always wanted to be a pilgrim, and I have 
decided to start early to-mcerrow to the shrine 
of Notre Dame de Liesse. Do you know what 
Liesse is? It is an old word forjoy. I suppose 
the same as Letizia, Letitia. I just heard to- 
night of the shrine or chapel, by chance, as you 
would say, from the sweet woman of the au- 
berge, who wants me to live always at Berne- 
val. She says Notre Dame de Liesse is won- 
derful, and helps everyone to the secret of joy 
—TI do not know how long it will take me to get 
to the shrine, as I must walk. But, from 
what she tells me, it will take at least siz 
or seven minutes to get there, and as many 
to come back. In fact the chapel of Notre 
Dame de Liesse is just fifty yards from the 
Hotel. Isn’t it extraordinary? I intend to 
start after I have had my coffee, and then to 
bathe. Need I say that this is a miracle? | 
wanted to go on a pilgrimage, and I find the 
little grey stone chapel of Our Lady of Joy is 
brought to me. It has probably been waiting 
for me all these purple years of pleasure, and 
now it comes to meet me with Liesse as its 
message. I simply don’t know what to say. 
I wish you were not so hard to poor heretics,} 


1The correspondent to whom Wilde writes and the other friend re- 
ferred to are Roman Catholics, 


378 OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 


and would admit that even for the sheep 
who has no shepherd there is a Stella Maris 
to guide it home. But you and More, espe- 
cially More, treat me as a Dissenter. It is 
very painful and quite unjust. 

Yesterday I attended Mass at Io o’clock 
and afterwards bathed. So I went into 
the water without being a pagan. ‘The 
consequence was that I was not tempted 
by either sirens or mermaidens, or any of the 
green-haired following of Glaucus.  [ really 
think that this is a remarkable thing. In my 
Pagan days the sea was always full of Tritons 
blowing conchs, and other unpleasant things. - 
Now it is quite different. And yet you 
treat me as the President of Mansfield Col- 
lege; and after I had canonised you too. 

Dear boy, 1 wish you would tell me if 
your religion makes you happy. You con- 
ceal your religion from me in a monstrous 
way. You treat it like writing in the Saturday 
Review for Pollock, or dining in Wardour 
Street off the fascinating dish that is served 
with tomatoes and makes men mad.!_ I know 
it is useless asking you, so don’t tell me. | 

I felt an outcast in Chapel yesterday—not 
really, but a little in exile. JI met a dear 


1 This refers to a story which Wilde was much interested in at the 
time, 


OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 379 


farmer in a corn field and he gave me a seat 
on his banc in church: so I was quite com- 
fortable. He now visits me twice a day, 
and,as he has no children, and is rich, I 
have made him promise to adopt three— 
two boys and a girl. I told him that if he 
wanted them, he would find them. He said 
he was afraid that they would turn out badly. 
I told him everyone did that. He really has 
promised to adopt three orphans. He is now 
filled with enthusiasm at the idea. He is to 
go to the Curé and talk to him. He told me 
that his own father had fallen down in a fit 
one day as they were talking together, and 
that he had caught him in his arms, and put 
him to bed, where he died, and that he himself 
had often thought how dreadful it was that 
if he had a fit there was no one to catch him 
in his arms. It is quite clear that he must 
adopt orphans, is it not? 

I feel that Berneval is to be my home. 
I really do. Notre Dame de Liesse will be 
sweet to me, if I go on my knees to her, 
and she will advise me. It is extraordinary 
being brought here by a white horse that was 
a native of the place, and knew the road, and 
wanted to see its parents, now of advanced 
years. It is also extraordinary that I knew 
Berneval existed and was arranged for me. 


’ 


380 OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 


M. Bonnet! wants to build me a Chalet, 
1,000 metres of ground (I don’t know how 
much that is—but I suppose about 100 miles) 
and a Chalet with a studio, a balcony, a 
salle-a-manger, a huge kitchen, and three bed- 
rooms—a view of the sea, and trees—all for 
12,000 francs—£480. If I can write a play 
I am going to have it begun. Fancy one’s 
own lovely house and grounds in France for 
£480. No rent of any kind. Pray consider 
this, and approve, if you think well. Of course, 
not till I have done my play. 

An old gentleman lives here in the hotel. — 
He dines alone in his room, and then sits 
in the sun. He came here for two days 
and has stayed two years. His sole sorrow 
is that there is no theatre. Monsieur Bonnet 
is a little heartless about this, and says that 
as the old gentleman goes to bed at 8 o’clock 
a theatre would be of no use to him. The old 
gentleman says he only goes to bed at 8 
o’clock because there is no theatre. They 
argued the point yesterday for an hour. I 
sided with the old gentleman, but Logic sides 
with Monsieur Bonnet, I believe. 

I had a sweet letter from the Sphinx.? 


1The proprietor of the hotel. 
*The Sphinx is a nickname for Mrs. Leverson, author of “The 
Eleventh Hour,” and other witty novels. 


Re ee Sr 


OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 381 


She gives me a delightful account of Ernest! 
subscribing to Romeike while his divorce suit 
was running, and not being pleased with some 
of the notices. Considering the growing appre- 
ciation of Ibsen I must say that I am surprised 
the notices were not better, but nowadays 
everybody is jealous of everyone else, except, 
of course, husband and wife. I think I shall 
keep this last remark of mine for my play. 

Have you got my silver spoon? from Reggie? 
You got my silver brushes out of Humphreys, 
who is bald, so you might easily get my spoon 
out of Reggie, who has so many, or used to 
have. You know my crest is on it. It is a bit 
of Irish silver, and I don’t want to lose it. 
There is an excellent substitute called Bri- 
tannia metal, very much liked at the Adelphi 
and elsewhere. Wilson Barrett writes, ‘I 
prefer it to silver.” It would suit dear Reggie 
admirably. Walter Besant writes, “I use 
none other.”?’ Mr. Beerbohm Tree also writes, 
‘Since I] have tried it I am a different actor; 
my friends hardly recognise me.” So there is 
obviously a demand for it. 

I am going to write a Political Economy 
in my heavier moments. The first law I 


1Ernest was her husband. 

2The silver spoon is a proposed line for a play given by Ross to 
Turner (Reggie). 

3 Wilde’s solicitor in Regina v. Wilde, 


382 OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 


lay down is, “‘Whenever there exists a demand, 
there is no supply.” ‘This is the only law that 
explains the extraordinary contrast between the 
soul of man and man’s surroundings. Civ- 
ilisations continue because people hate them. 
A modern city is the exact opposite of what 
everyone wants. Nineteenth-century dress is 
the result of our horror of the style. ‘The tall 
hat will last as long as people dislike it. 

Dear Robbie, I wish you would be a little 
more considerate, and not keep me up so late 
talking to you. It is very flattering to me 
and all that, but you should remember that 
I need rest. Good-night. You will find some 
cigarettes and some flowers by your bedside. 
Coffee is served below at 8 o’clock. Do you 
mind? If it is too early for you I don’t at all 
mind lying in bed an extra hour. I hope you 
will sleep well. You should as Lloyd is not on 
the Verandah.! 


Tuespay Mornin, 9.30. 

The sea and sky are opal—no_ horrid 
drawing master’s line between them—just one 
fishing boat, going slowly, and drawing the 
wind after it. I am going to bathe. 


6 O'CLOCK. 
Bathed and have seen a Chalet here which 


1A reference to the ‘‘Vailima Letters” of Stevenson which Wilde 
read when he was in prison. 


OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 383 


I wish to take for the season—quite charming— 
a- splendid view: a large writing room, a dining 
room, and three lovely bedrooms—besides ser- 
vants’ rooms and also a huge balcony. 

I don’t know the scale 


{In this blank space he had ot the drawing but the 
roughly drawn a ground plan , 


of the imagined Chilet.] rooms are larger than 
the plan is. 

I. Salle-a-manger. All on ground floor 

2. Salon. with steps from bal- 

3. Balcony. cony to ground. 


The rent for the season or year is, what 
do you think ?—£32. 

Of course I must have it: I will take my 
meals here—separate and reserved table: it is 
within two minutes walk. Do tell me to take 
it. When you come again your room will be 
waiting for you. All I need is a domestique. 
The people here are most kind. 

I made my pilgrimage—the interior of the 
Chapel is of course a modern horror—but 
there is a black image of Notre Dame de Liesse 
—the chapel is as tiny as an undergraduate’s 
room at Oxford. I hope to get the Curé to 
celebrate Mass in it soon; as a rule the service 
is only held there in July and August; but I 
want to see a Mass quite close. 

There is also another thing I must write 
to you about. 


384. OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 


I adore this place. The whole country is 
lovely, and full of forest and deep meadow. 
It is simple and healthy. If I live in Paris 
I may be doomed to things I don’t desire. I 
am afraid of big towns. Here I get up at 7.30. 
Iam happy all day. I goto bed ati1o. [am 
frightened of Paris. I want to live here. 

I have seen the “terrain.” It is the best 
here, and the only one left. I must build a 
house. If I could build a chalet for 12,000 © 

 francs—£500—and live in a home of my 
own, how happy I would be. I must raise 
the money somehow. It would give me 
a home, quiet, retired, healthy, and near ~ 
England. If I live in Egypt I know what 
my life would be. If I live in the south of 
Italy I know I should be idle and worse. 
I want to live here. Do think over this 
and send me over the architect.1_ M. Bonnet 
is excellent and is ready to carry out any idea. 
I want a little chalet of wood and plaster 
walls, the wooden beams showing and the 
white square of plaster diapering the frame- 
work—like, I regret to say—Shakespeare’s 
house—like old English sixteenth-century 
farmers’ houses. So your architect has me 
waiting for him, as he is waiting for me. 

Do you think the idea absurd? 


1An architect who sent Wilde books on his release from prison. 


OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 385 


I got the Chronicle, many thanks. I see 
the writer on Prince—A.2.11.—does not men- 
tion my name—foolish of her—it is a woman. 

I, as you, the poem of my days, are away, 
am forced to write. I have begun something 
that I think will be very good. 

I breakfast to-morrow with the Stannards: 
what a great passionate, splendid writer 
John Strange Winter is! How little people 

understand her work! Booile’s Baby is an 
“ceuvre symboliste”—it is really only the 
style and the subject that are wrong. Pray 
never speak lightly of Bootle’s Baby—Indeed 
pray never speak of it at all—I never do. 
Yours, 
Oscar. 


Please send a Chronicle to my wife. 
Mrs. C. M. Houttanp, 
Maison Benguerel, 
Bevaix, 

Pres de Neuchatel, 
just marking it—and if my second letter 
appears, mark that. 

Also cut out the letter! and enclose it in 
an envelope to: 
Mr. ArtTHuR CRUTHENDEN, 


Poste Restante, G.P.O., Reading, 


1 His letter to The Daily Chronicle about Warder Martin and the little 
children. 


386 OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 


with just these lines: 
Dear friend, 

The enclosed will interest you. ‘There is 
also another letter waiting in the post office 
for you from me with a little money. Ask for 
it if you have not got it. 

Yours sincerely, 
aie Yaa 

I have no one but you, dear Robbie, to 
do anything. Of course the letter to Reading 
must go at once, as my friends come out 
on Wednesday morning early. 


This letter displays almost every quality of 
Oscar Wilde’s genius in perfect efflorescence— 
his gaiety, joyous merriment and exquisite sensi- 
bility. Who can read of the little Chapel to 
Notre Dame de Liesse without emotion quickly 
to be changed to mirth by the sunny humour of 
those delicious specimens of self-advertisement: 
““Mr. Beerbohm Tree also writes: ‘Since I have 
tried it, | am a different actor, my friends hardly 
recognise me.” 

This letter is the most characteristic thing 
Oscar Wilde ever wrote, a thing produced in per- 
fect health at the topmost height of happy hours, 
more characteristic even than “‘The Importance 
of Being Earnest,” for it has not only the humour 
of that delightful farce-comedy, but also more 


Se eS eee 


OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 387 


than a hint of the deeper feeling which was 
even then forming itself into a master-work that 
will form part of the inheritance of men forever. 

“The Ballad of Reading Gaol” belongs to this 
summer of 1897. A fortunate conjuncture of cir- 
cumstances—the prison discipline excluding all 
sense-indulgence, the kindness shown him to- 
wards the end of his imprisonment and of course 
the delight of freedom—gave him perfect phys- 
ical health and hope and joy in work, and so 
Oscar was enabled for a few brief months to do 
better than his best. He assured me and I be- 
lieve that the conception of ‘The Ballad” came 
to him in prison and was due to the alleviation 
of his punishment and the permission accorded 
to him to write and read freely—a divine fruit 
born directly of his pity for others and the pity 
others felt for him. 

“The Ballad of Reading Gaol”! was published 
in January, 1898, over the signature of C. 3. 3., 
Oscar’s number in prison. In a few weeks it 
ran through dozens of editions in England and 
America and translations appeared in almost 


1The Ballad was finished in Naples and Alfred Douglas has since 
declared that he helped Oscar Wilde to write it. I have no wish to 
dispute this: Alfred Douglas’ poetic gift was extraordinary, far greater 
than Oscar Wilde’s. The poem was conceived in prison and a good deal 
of it was printed before Oscar went near Alfred Douglas and some of the 
best stanzas in it are to be found in this earlier portion: no part of the 
credit of it, in my opinion, belongs to Alfred Douglas. See, Appendix 
for Ross’s opinion. ; ; 


388 | OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 


every European language, which is proof not 
so much of the excellence of the poem as the great 
place the author held in the curiosity of men. 


The enthusiasm with which it was accepted in > 


England was astounding. One reviewer com- 
pared it with the best of Sophocles; another said 
that “nothing like it has appeared in our time.” 
No word of criticism was heard: the most cau- 
tious called it a “‘simple poignant ballad, ... 
one of the greatest in the English language.” 
This praise is assuredly not too generous. Yet 
even this was due to a revulsion of feeling in 
regard to Oscar himself rather than to any un- 
derstanding of the greatness of his work. The 
best public felt that he had been dreadfully 
over-punished, and made a scapegoat for worse 
offenders and was glad to have the opportunity 
of repairing its own fault by over-emphasising 
Oscar’s repentance and over-praising, as it 
imagined, the first fruits of the converted sinner. 

“The Ballad of Reading Gaol” is far and away 
the best poem Oscar Wilde ever wrote; we 
should try to appreciate it as the future will 
appreciate it. We need not be afraid to trace 
it to its source and note what is borrowed in it 
and what is original. After all necessary quali- 
fications are made, it will stand as a great and 
splendid achievement. 

Shortly before “The Ballad” was written, a 


a a oe ee 


OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 389 


little book of poetry called “A Shropshire Lad” 
was published by A. E. Housman, now I be- 
lieve professor of Latin at Cambridge. ‘There 
are only a hundred odd pages in the booklet; but 
it is full of high poetry—sincere and passionate 
feeling set to varied music. His friend, Reginald 
Turner, sent Oscar a copy of the book and one 
poem in particular made a deep impression on 
him. It is said that “his actual model for ‘The 
Ballad of Reading Gaol’ was ‘The Dream of 
Eugene Aram’ with ‘The Ancient Mariner’ 
thrown in on technical grounds”; but I believe 
that Wilde owed most of his inspiration to “A 
Shropshire Lad.” 

Here are some verses from Housman’s poem 
and some verses from “The Ballad”: 


On moonlit heath and lonesome bank 
The sheep beside me graze; 

And yon the gallows used to clank 
Fast by the four cross ways. 


A careless shepherd once would keep 
The flocks by moonlight there, ! 

And high amongst the glimmering sheep 
The dead men stood on air. 


They hang us now in Shrewsbury jail: 
The whistles blow forlorn, 

And trains all night groan on the rail 
To men that die at morn. 


1 Hanging in chains was called keeping sheep by moonlight. 


390 OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 


There sleeps in Shrewsbury jail to-night, 
Or wakes, as may betide, 

A better lad, if things went right, 
Than most that sleep outside. 


And naked to the hangman’s noose 
The morning clocks will ring 

A neck God made for other use 
Than strangling in a string. 


And sharp the link of life will snap, 
And dead on air will stand 

Heels that held up as straight a chap 
As treads upon the land. 


So nere Ill watch the night and wait 
To see the morning shine 

When he will hear the stroke of eight 
And not the stroke of nine; 


And wish my friend as sound a sleep 
As lads I did not know, 

That shepherded the moonlit sheep 
A hundred years ago. 


THE BALLAD OF READING GAOL 


It is sweet to dance to violins 
When Love and Life are fair: 

To dance to flutes, to dance to lutes, 
Is delicate and rare: 

But it is not sweet with nimble feet 
To dance upon the air! 


OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 391 


And as one sees most fearful things 
In the crystal of a dream, 

We saw the greasy hempen rope 
Hooked to the blackened beam 

And heard the prayer the hangman’s snare 
Strangled into a scream. 


And all the woe that moved him so 
That he gave that bitter cry, 

And the wild regrets, and the bloody sweats, 
None knew so well as I: 

For he who lives more lives than one 
More deaths than one must die. 


There are better things in “The Ballad of 
Reading Gaol” than those inspired by Housman. 
In the last of the three verses I quote there is 
a distinction of thought which Housman hardly 
reached, 


“For he who lives more lives than one 
More deaths than one must die.”’ 


There are verses, too, wrung from the heart 
which have a diviner influence than any product 
of the intellect: 


The Chaplain would not kneel to pray 
By his dishonoured grave: 

Nor mark it with that blessed Cross 
That Christ for sinners gave, 

Because the man was one of those 
Whom Christ came down to save. 


392 OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 


This too I know—and wise were it 
If each could know the same— 

That every prison that men build 
Is built with bricks of shame, 

And bound with bars lest Christ should see 
How men their brothers maim. 


With bars they blur the gracious moon, 
And blind the goodly sun: 

And they do well to hide their Hell, 
For in it things are done 

That Son of God nor son of man 
Ever should look upon! 


The vilest deeds like poison weeds 
Bloom well in prison-air: 

It is only what is good in Man 
That wastes and withers there: 
Pale Anguish keeps the heavy gate, 

And the Warder is Despair. 


And he of the swollen purple throat, 
And the stark and staring eyes, 
Waits for the holy hands that took 

The Thief to Paradise; 
And a broken and a contrite heart 
The Lord will not despise. 


“The Ballad of Reading Gaol” is beyond all 
comparison the greatest ballad in English: one 
of the noblest poems in the language. This is 
what prison did for Oscar Wilde. 

When speaking to him later about this poem 
I remember assuming that his prison experiences 


OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 393 


must have helped him to realise the suffering of 
the condemned soldier and certainly lent passion 
to his verse. But he would not hear of it. 

“Oh, no, Frank,’ he cried, “never; my ex- 
periences in prison were too horrible, too pain- 
ful to be used. I simply blotted them out alto- 
gether and refused to recall them.” 

“What about the verse?” I asked: 


“We sewed the sacks, we broke the stones, 
We turned the dusty drill: 

We banged the tins, and bawled the hymns, 
And sweated on the mill: 

And in the heart of every man 
Terror was lying still.” 


“Characteristic details, Frank, merely the 
décor of prison life, not its reality; that no one 
could paint, not even Dante, who had to turn 
away his eyes from lesser suffering.” 

It may be worth while to notice here, as 
an example of the hatred with which Oscar 
Wilde’s name and work were regarded, that 
even after he had paid the penalty for his 
crime the publisher and editor, alike in England 
and America, put anything but a high price 
on his best work. They would have bought 
a play readily enough because they would 
have known that it would make them money, 
but a ballad from his pen nobody seemed to 
want. The highest price offered in America 


394 OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 


for “The Ballad of Reading Gaol” was one hun- 
dred dollars. Oscar found difficulty in getting 
even £20 for the English rights from the friend 
who published it; yet it has sold since by hun- 
dreds of thousands and is certain always to sell. 

I must insert here part of another letter from 
Oscar Wilde which appeared in The Daily 
Chronicle, 24th March, 1898, on the cruelties 
of the English prison system; it was headed, 
“Don’t read this if you want to be happy to- 
day,” and was signed by “The Author of ‘The 
Ballad of Reading Gaol.’” It was manifestly 
a direct outcome of his prison experiences. The 
letter was simple and affecting; but it had little 
or no influence on the English conscience. ‘The 
Home Secretary was about to reform (!) the 
prison system by appointing more inspectors. 
Oscar Wilde pointed out that inspectors could 
do nothing but see that the regulations were 
carried out. He took up the position that it 
was the regulations which needed reform. His 
plea was irrefutable in its moderation and sim- 
plicity: but it was beyond the comprehension 
of an English Home Secretary apparently, for 
all the abuses pointed out by Oscar Wilde still 
flourish. I can’t help giving some extracts from 
this memorable indictment: memorable for its 
reserve and sanity and complete absence of any 
bitterness: | 


OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 395 


“*, ... Lhe prisoner who has been allowed 


the smallest privilege dreads the arrival of the 
inspectors. And on the day of any prison in- 
spection the prison officials are more than usu- 
ally brutal to the prisoners. Their object is, of 
course, to show the splendid discipline they 
maintain. 

“The necessary reforms are very simple. 
They concern the needs of the body and the 
needs of the mind of each unfortunate prisoner. 

“With regard to the first, there are three 
permanent punishments authorised by law in 
English prisons: 

“i. Hunger. . 

“2. Insomnia. 

“3, Disease. 

“The food supplied to prisoners is entirely 
‘inadequate. Most of it is revolting in charac- 
ter. All of it is insufficient. Every prisoner 
suffers day and night from hunger. 

“The result of the food—which in most cases 
consists of weak gruel, badly baked bread, suet 
and water—is disease in the form of incessant 
diarrhoea. This malady, which ultimately with 
most prisoners becomes a permanent disease, is 
a recognised institution in every prison. At 
Wandsworth Prison, for instance—where I was 
confined for two months, till I had to be carried 
into hospital, where I remained for another 


396 OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 


two months—the warders go round twice or 
three times a day with astringent medicine, 
which they serve out to the prisoners as a matter 
of course. After about a week of such treat- 
ment it is unnecessary to say that the medicine 
produces no effect at all. 

““The wretched prisoner is thus left a prey to” 
the most weakening, depressing and humiliating 
malady that can be conceived, and if, as often 
happens, he fails from physical weakness to 
complete his required evolutions at the crank, 
or the mill, he is reported for idleness and pun- 
ished with the greatest severity and brutality. 
Nor is this all. 

“Nothing can be worse than the sanitary ar- 
rangements of English prisons. . . . The foul 
air of the prison cells, increased by a system of 
ventilation that is utterly ineffective, is so sick- 
ening and unwholesome that it is not uncom- 
mon for warders, when they come into the room 
out of the fresh air, and open and inspect each 
cell; ‘to be violently sicki' 2. 

“With regard to the punishment of insomnia, 
it only exists in Chinese and English prisons. 
In China it is inflicted by placing the prisoner 
in a small bamboo cage; in England by means 
of the plank bed. The object of the plank bed 
is to produce insomnia. ‘There is no other ob- 
ject in it, and it invariably succeeds. And even 


OSCAR WILDE AND HIs CONFESSIONS 397 


when one is subsequently allowed a hard mat- 

tress, as happens in the course of imprisonment, 

one still suffers from insomnia. It is a revolting 

and ignorant punishment. 

With regard to the needs of the mind, I 
beg that you will allow me to say something. 

‘The present prison system seems almost to 
have for its aim the wrecking and the destruc- 
tion of the mental faculties. ‘The production 
of insanity is, if not its object, certainly its 
result. ‘That is a well-ascertained fact. Its 
causes are obvious. Deprived of books, of all 
human intercourse, isolated from every humane 
and humanising influence, condemned to eternal 
silence, robbed of all intercourse with the ex- 
ternal world, treated like an unintelligent ani- 
mal, brutalised below the level of any of the 
_ brute-creation, the wretched man who is con- 
fined in an English prison can hardly escape 
becoming insane.” 

This letter ended by saying that if all the 
reforms suggested were carried out much would 
still remain to be done. It would still be ad- 
visable to ““humanise the governors of prisons, 
to civilise the warders, and to Christianise the 
Chaplains.” 

This letter was the last effort of the new 
Oscar, the Oscar who had manfully tried to 
put the prison under his feet and to learn the 


398 OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 


significance of sorrow and the lesson of love 
which Christ brought into the world. 

In the beautiful pages about Jesus which 
form the greater part of De Profundis, also writ- 
ten in those last hopeful months in Reading Gaol, 
Oscar shows, I think, that he might have done 
much higher work than Tolstoi or Renan had he 
set himself resolutely to transmute his new in- 
sight into some form of art. Now and then he 
divined the very secret of Jesus: 

“When he says ‘Forgive your enemies’ it is 
not for the sake of the enemy, but for one’s 
own sake that he says so, and because love is 
more beautiful than hate. In his own entreaty 
to the young man, ‘Sell all that thou hast and 
give to the poor,’ it is not of the state of the 
poor that he is thinking but of the soul of the 
young man, the soul that wealth was marring.” 

In many of these pages Oscar Wilde really 
came close to the divine Master; “the image 
of the Man of Sorrows,” he says, “has fasci- 
nated and dominated art as no Greek god suc- 
ceeded in doing.” . . . . And again: 

“Out of the carpenter’s shop at Nazareth 
had come a personality infinitely greater than 
any made by myth and legend, and one, strange- 
ly enough, destined to reveal to the world the 
mystical meaning of wine and the real beauties 
of the lilies of the field as none, either on Cith- 


OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 399 


geron or Enna, has ever done. ‘The song of 
Isaiah, ‘He is despised and rejected of men, a 
man of sorrows and acquainted with grief: and 
we hid as it were our faces from him,’ had 
seemed to him to prefigure himself, and in him 
the prophecy was fulfilled.” 

In this spirit Oscar made up his mind that 
he would write about “‘Christ as the precursor 
of the romantic movement in life” and about 
“The artistic life considered in its relation to 
conduct.” 

By bitter suffering he had been brought to 
see that the moment of repentance is the mo- 
ment of absolution and self-realisation, that 
tears can wash out even blood. In “‘The Ballad 
of Reading Gaol” he wrote: 


And with tears of blood he cleansed the hand, 
The hand that held the steel: 

For only blood can wipe out blood, 
And only tears can heal: 

And the crimson stain that was of Cain 
Became Christ’s snow-white seal. 


This is the highest height Oscar Wilde ever 
reached, and alas! he only trod the summit for a 
moment. But as he says himself: “One has per- 
haps to go to prison to understand that. And, 
if so, it may be worth while going to prison.” 
He was by nature a pagan who for a few months 
became a Christian, but to live as a lover of 


400 OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 


Jesus was impossible to this “Greek born out of 
due time,’ and he never even dreamed of a 
reconciling synthesis. .... 

The arrest of his development makes him a 
better representative of his time: he was an 
artistic expression of the best English mind: a 
Pagan and Epicurean, his rule of conduct was 
a selfish Individualism:—“Am I my brother’s 
keeper?” ‘This attitude must entail a dreadful 
Nemesis, for it condemns one Briton in every four 
to a pauper’s grave. The result will convince 
the most hardened that such selfishness is not a 
creed by which human beings can live in society. 


This summer of 1897 was the harvest time in 
Oscar Wilde’s Life; and his golden Indian summer. 
We owe it “De Profundis,” the best pages of 
prose he ever wrote, and “‘ The Ballad of Reading 
Gaol,” his only original poem; yet one that will 
live as long as the language: we owe it also that 
sweet and charming letter to Bobbie Ross which 
shows him in his habit as he lived. I must still 
say a word or two about him in this summer in 
order to show the ordinary working of his mind. 

On his release, and, indeed, for a year or two 
later, he called himself Sebastian Melmoth. 
But one had hardly spoken a half a dozen words 
to him, when he used to beg to be called Oscar 
Wilde. I remember how he pulled up someone 


OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 401 


who had just been introduced to him, who 
persisted in addressing him as Mr. Melmoth. 

eau me Oscar Wilde,’ he pleaded, “Mr. 
~ Melmoth is unknown, you see.” 

“I thought you preferred it,” said the stranger 
excusing himself. 

“Oh, dear, no,’ interrupted Oscar smiling, 
“IT only use the name Melmoth to spare the 
blushes of the postman, to preserve his mod- 
esty,’ and he laughed in the old delightful way. 

It was always significant to me the eager 
delight with which he shuffled off the new 
name and took up the old one which he had 
made famous. 

An anecdote from his life in the Chalet at this 
time showed that the old witty pagan in Oscar 
Was not yet extinct. 

An English lady who had written a great 
many novels and happened to be staying in 
Dieppe heard of him, and out of kindness or 
curiosity, or perhaps a mixture of both mo- 
tives, wrote and invited him to luncheon. He 
accepted the invitation. ‘The good lady did 


not know how to talk to Mr. Sebastian Mel- 


Hoth, and time went heavily. At length 
she began to expatiate on the cheapness of 
things in France; did Mr. Melmoth know how 
wonderfully cheap and good the living was? 
“Only fancy,” she went on, “‘you would not 


402 OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 


believe what that claret you are drinking costs.” 

“Really?” questioned Oscar, with a polite 
smile. 

“Of course I get it wholesale,” she explained, 
“but it only costs me sixpence a quart.” 

“Oh, my dear lady, I’m afraid you have been 
cheated,” he exclaimed, “ladies should never 
buy wine. I’m afraid you have been sadly over- 
charged.” 

The humour may excuse the discourtesy, but 
Oscar was so uniformly polite to everyone that 
the incident simply shows how ineffably he had 
been bored. 

This summer of 1897 was the decisive period 
and final turning-point in Oscar Wilde’s career. 
So long as the sunny weather lasted and friends 
came to visit him from time to time Oscar was © 
content to live in the Chalet Bourgeat; but when 
the days began to draw in and the weather 
became unsettled, the dreariness of a life passed 
in solitude, indoors, and without a library be- 
came insupportable. He was being drawn in 
two opposite directions. I did not know it at 
the time; indeed he only told me about it 
months later when the matter had been decided 
irrevocably; but this was the moment when his 
soul was at stake between good and evil. The 
question was whether his wife would come to 
him again-or whether he would yield to the 


OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 403 


solicitations of Lord Alfred Douglas and go to 
live with him. 

Mr. Sherard has told in his book how he 
brought about the first reconciliation between 
Oscar and his wife; and how immediately after- 
wards he received a letter from Lord Alfred 
Douglas threatening to shoot him like a dog, 
if, by any words of his, Wilde’s friendship was 
lost to him, Douglas. 

Unluckily Mrs. Wilde’s family were against 
her going back to her husband; they begged 
her not to go; talked to her of her duty to her 
children and herself, and the poor woman hesi- 
tated. Finally her advisers decided for her, and 
Mrs. Wilde wrote this decision to Oscar’s solic- 
itors shortly before his release: Oscar’s proba- 
tion was to last at least a year. I do not know 
enough about Mrs. Wilde and her relations with 
her family and with her husband even to discuss 
her inaction: I dare not criticise her: but she did 
not go to her husband when if she had gone 
boldly she might have saved him. She knew 
Lord Alfred Douglas’ influence over him; knew 
that it had already brought him to grief. Gide 
says, and Oscar himself told me afterwards, that 
he had come out of prison determined not to 
go back to Alfred Douglas and the old life. 
It seems a pity that his wife did not act prompt- 
ly; she allowed herself to believe that a time 


404. OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 


of probation was necessary. The delay wounded 
Oscar, and all the while, as he told me a little 
later, he was resisting an influence which had 
dominated his life in the past. 

“TI got a letter almost every day, Frank, beg- 
ging me to come to Posilippo, to the villa which 
Lord Alfred Douglas had rented. Every day 
I heard his voice calling, ‘Come, come, to sun- 
shine and to me. Come to Naples with its 
wonderful museum of bronzes and Pompeii and 
Pestum, the city of Poseidon: I am waiting to 
welcome you. Come.’ 

“Who could resist it, Frank? love calles 
calling with outstretched arms; who could stay 
in bleak Berneval and watch the sheets of rain 
falling, falling—and the grey mist shrvcuding 
the grey sea, and think of Naples and love and 
sunshine; who could resist it all? I could not, 
Frank, I was so lonely and I hated solitude. 
I resisted as long as I could, but when chill 
October came and Bosie came to Rouen for me, 
I gave up the struggle and yielded.” 

Could Oscar Wilde have won and made for 
himself a new and greater life? The majority of 
men are content to think that such a victory was 
impossible to him. Everyone knows that he 
lost; but I at least believe that he might have 
won. His wife was on the point of yielding, I 
have since been told; on the point of complete 


OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 405 


reconciliation when she heard that he had gone 
to Naples and returned to his old habit of living; 
a few days made all the difference. 

It was at the instigation of Lord Alfred Doug- 
las that Oscar began the insane action against 
Lord Queensberry, in which he put to hazard 
his success, his position, his good name and lib- 
erty, and lost them all. ‘Two years later at the 
same tempting, he committed soul-suicide. 

He was not only better in health than he 
had ever been; but he was talking and writing 
better than ever before and full of literary 
projects which would certainly have given 
him money and position and a measure of 
happiness besides increasing his reputation. 
From the moment he went to Naples he was 
lost, and he knew it himself; he never afterwards 
wrote anything: as he used to say, he could never 
afterwards face his own soul. 

He could never have won up again, the world 
says, and shrugs careless shoulders. It isa cheap, 
unworthy conclusion. Some of us still persist in 
believing that Oscar Wilde might easily have 
won and never again been caught in that dread- 
ful wind which whips the victims of sensual 
desire about unceasingly, driving them hither 
and thither without rest in that awful place 
where: “Nulla speranza gli conforta mai.” (No 
hope ever comforts!) 


CHAPTER XX 


“Non dispetto, ma doglia.’”’—Dante. 


Oscar WILDE did not stay long in Naples, a 
few brief months; the forbidden fruit quickly 
turned to ashes in his mouth. 

I give the following extracts from a letter he 
wrote to Robert Ross in December, 1897, shortly 
after leaving Naples, because it describes the 
second great crisis in his life and is besides the 
bitterest thing he ever wrote and therefore of 
peculiar value: 


“The facts of Naples are very bald. Bosie 
for four months, by endless lies, offered me a 
home. He offered me love, affection, and care, 
and promised that I should never want for 
anything. After four months I accepted his 
offer, but when we met on our way to Naples, 
I found he had no money, no plans, and had 
forgotten all his promises. His one idea was 
that I should raise the money for us both; I did 
so to the extent of £120. On this Bosie lived 
quite happy. When it came to his having to 
pay his own share he became terribly unkind 
and penurious, except where his own pleasures 

406 


OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 407 


were concerned, and when my allowance 
ceased, he left. 

“With regard to the £500! which he said 
was a debt of honour, he has written to me 
to say that he admits the debt of honour, but 
as lots of gentlemen don’t pay their debts of 
honour, it is quite a common thing and no one 
thinks any the worse of them. 

*““T don’t know what you said to Constance, 

but the bald fact is that I accepted the offer 
of the home, and found that I was expected 
to provide the money, and when I could 
no longer do so I was left to my own devices. 
It is the most bitter experience of a bitter 
life. It is a blow quite awful. It had to 
come, but I know it is better I should never 
see him again, I don’t want to, it fills me with 
horror.” 
A word of explanation will explain his refer- 
ence to his wife, Constance, in this letter: by a 
deed of separation made at the end of his im- 
prisonment, Mrs. Wilde undertook to allow 
1This was the sum promised by the whole Queensberry family and 
by Lord Alfred Douglas in particular to Oscar to defray the costs of 
that first action for libel which they persuaded him to bring against 
Lord Queensberry. Ross has since stated in court that it was never _ 
paid. ‘The history of the monies promised and supplied to Oscar at 
that time is so extraordinary and so characteristic of the age that it 
might well furnish a chapter to itself. Here it is enough just to say 
that those who ought to have supplied him with money evaded the 


obligation, while others upon whom he had no claim, helped him liber- 
ally; but even large sums slipped through his careless fingers like water. 


408 OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 


Oscar £150 a year for life, under the condition 


that the allowance was to be forfeited if Oscar _ 


ever lived under the same roof with Lord Alfred 
Douglas. Having forfeited the allowance Oscar 
got Robert Ross to ask his wife to continue it 
and in spite of the forfeiture Mrs. Wilde con- 
tinually sent Oscar money through Robert Ross, 
merely stipulating that her husband should 
not be told whence the money came. Ross,’ 
too, who had also sent him £150 a year, re- 
sumed his monthly payments as soon as ne left 
Douglas. 

My friendship with Oscar Wilde, which had 
been interrupted after he left prison by a silly 
gibe directed rather against the go-between he 
had sent to me than against him, was renewed 
in Paris early in 1898. I have related the little 
misunderstanding in the Appendix. I had never 
felt anything but the most cordial affection for 
Oscar and as soon as I went to Paris and met 
him I explained what had seemed to him un- 
kind. When I asked him about his life since his 
release he told me simply that he had quarrelled 
with Bosie Douglas. 

I did not attribute much importance to this; 
but I could not help noticing the extraordinary 
change that had taken place in him since he had 
been in Naples. His health was almost as good 
as ever; in fact, the prison discipline with its two 


OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 409 


years of hard living had done him so much good 
that his health continued excellent almost to the 
end. 

But his whole manner and attitude to life had 
- again changed: he now resembled the successful 
Oscar of the early nineties: I caught echoes, too, 
in his speech of a harder, smaller nature; ‘‘that 
talk about reformation, Frank, is all nonsense; 
no one ever really reforms or changes. I am 
what | always was.” 

He was mistaken: he took up again the old 
pagan standpoint; but he was not the same; he 
was reckless now, not thoughtless, and, as soon 
as one probed a little beneath the surface, de- 
pressed almost to despairing. He had learnt 
the meaning of suffering and pity, had sensed 

their value; he had turned his back upon them 
all, it is true, but he could not return to pagan 
carelessness, and the light-hearted enjoyment 
of pleasure. He did his best and almost suc- 
ceeded; but the effort was there. His creed 
now was what it used to be about 1892: “‘Let us 
get what pleasure we may in the fleeting days; 
for the night cometh, and the silence that can 
never be broken.” 

The old doctrine of original sin, we now call 
reversion to type; the most lovely garden rose, 
if allowed to go without discipline and tendance, 
will in a few generations become again the com- 


410 OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 


mon scentless dog-rose of our hedges. Such a 
reversion to type had taken place in Oscar 
Wilde. It must be inferred perhaps that the 
old pagan Greek in him was stronger than the 
Christian virtues which had been called into 
being by the discipline and suffering of prison. 
Little by little, as he began to live his old life 
again, the lessons learned in prison seemed to 
drop from him and be forgotten. But in reality 
the high thoughts he had lived with, were not 
lost; his lips had been touched by the divine 
fire; his eyes had seen the world-wonder of 
sympathy, pity and love and, strangely enough, 
this higher vision helped, as we shall soon see, 
to shake his individuality from its centre, and 
thus destroyed his power of work and completed 
his soul-ruin. Oscar’s second fall—this time from — 
a height—was fatal and made writing impos- 
sible to him. It is all clear enough now in 
retrospect though I did not understand it at the 
time. When he went to live with Bosie Douglas 
he threw off the Christian attitude, but after- 
wards had to recognise that “‘De Profundis” 
and “The Ballad of Reading Gaol”’ were deeper 
and better work than any of his earlier writings. 
He resumed the pagan position; outwardly and 
for the time being he was the old Oscar again, 
with his Greek love of beauty and hatred of 
disease, deformity and ugliness, and whenever 


OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS All 


he met a kindred spirit, he absolutely revelled in 
gay paradoxes and brilliant flashes of humour. 
But he was at war with himself, like Milton’s 
Satan always conscious of his fall, always re- 
 gretful of his lost estate and by reason of this 
division of spirit unable to write. Perhaps be- 
cause of this he threw himself more than ever 
into talk. 

He was beyond all comparison the most inter- 
esting companion I have ever known: the most 
brilliant talker, I cannot but think, that ever 
lived. No one surely ever gave himself more 
entirely in speech. Again and again he declared 
that he had only put his talent into his books 
and plays, but his genius into his life. If he 
had said into his talk, it would have been the 
exact truth. 

People have differed a great deal about his 
mental and physical condition after he came 
out of prison. All who knew him really, Ross, 
Turner, More Adey, Lord Alfred Douglas and 
myself, are agreed that in spite of a slight deaf- 
ness he was never better in health, never in- 
deed so well. But some French friends were de- 
termined to make him out a martyr. 

In his picture of Wilde’s last years, Gide tells 
us that “‘he had suffered’ too grievously from 
Meetiprisonment. . . . . His will had been 
broken . . . . nothing remained in his shat- 


412 OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 


tered life but a mouldy ruin,! painful to contem- 
plate, of his former self. At times he seemed to 


Pare, ‘ 
fi eg 4 he ne: 
oe id Sas Die Si 


wish to show that his brain was still active. 


Humour there was; but it was far-fetched, forced 


and threadbare.” 

These touches may be necessary in order to 
complete a French picture of the social outcast. 
They are not only untrue when applied to 
Oscar Wilde, but the reverse of the truth; he 
never talked so well, was never so charming a 
companion as in the last years of his life. 

In the very last year his talk was more genial, 
more humorous, more vivid than ever, with a 
wider range of thought and intenser stimulus 
than before. He was a born improvisatore. At 
the moment he always dazzled one out of judg- 


ment. A phonograph would have discovered — 


the truth; a great part of his charm was physical; 
much of his talk mere topsy-turvy paradox, the 
very froth of thought carried off by gleaming, 
dancing eyes, smiling, happy lips, and a melodi- 
ous voice. 

The entertainment usually started with some 
humorous play on words. One of the company 
would say something obvious or trivial, repeat a 
proverb or commonplace tag such as, “‘Genius is 
born, not made,” and Oscar would flash in smil- 
ing, “‘not ‘paid,’ my dear fellow, not ‘paid.’” 

1Cfr. Appendix: “Criticisms by Robert Ross.” 


OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 413 


An interesting comment would follow on some 
doing of the day, a skit on some accepted belief 
or a parody of some pretentious solemnity, a 
winged word on a new book or a new author, and 
when everyone was smiling with amused enjoy- 
_ ment, the fine eyes would become introspective, 
the beautiful voice would take on a grave music 
and Oscar would begin a story, a story with 
symbolic second meaning or a glimpse of new 
thought, and when all were listening enthralled, 
of a sudden the eyes would dance, the smile 
break forth again like sunshine and some spark- 
ling witticism would set everyone laughing. 

The spell was broken, but only for a moment. 
A new clue would soon be given and at once 
Oscar was off again with renewed brio to finer 
effects. 
_ ‘The talking itself warmed and quickened him 

extraordinarily: he loved to show off and aston- 
ish his audience, and usually talked better after an 
hour or two than at the beginning. His verve 
was inexhaustible. But always a great part of 
the fascination lay in the quick changes from 
grave to gay, from pathos to mockery, from 
philosophy to fun. 

There was but little of the actor in him. When 
telling a story he never mimicked his personages; 
his drama seldom lay in clash of character, but 
in thought; it was the sheer beauty of the words, 


414 OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 


the melody of the cadenced voice, the slows 


ing eyes which fascinated you and always 


and above all the scintillating, coruscating © 


humour that lifted his monologues into works 
ObNart. 

Curiously enough he seldom talked of himself 
or of the incidents of his past life. After the 
prison he always regarded himself as a sort of 
Prometheus and his life as symbolic; but his 
earlier experiences never suggested themselves 
to him as specially significant; the happenings of 
his life after his fall seemed predestined and 
fateful to him; yet of those he spoke but seldom. 
Even when carried away by his own eloquence, 
he kept the tone of good society. 

When you came afterwards to think over one 


of those wonderful evenings when he had talked 


for hours, almost without interruption, you 
hardly found more than an epigram, a fugitive 
flash of critical insight, an apologue or pretty 
story charmingly told. Over all this he had cast 
the glittering, sparkling robe of his Celtic gaiety, 
verbal humour, and sensual enjoyment of living. 
It was all like champagne; meant to be drunk 
quickly; if you let it stand, you soon realised 
that some still wines had rarer virtues. But 
there was always about him the magic of a 
rich and puissant personality; like some great 


actor he could take a poor part and fill it with © 


ai nem tim 


OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS AIS 


the passion and vivacity of his own nature, till 
it became a living and memorable creation. 

He gave the impression of wide intellectual 
range, yet in reality he was not broad; life was 
not his study nor the world-drama his field. 

His talk was all of literature and art and the 
vanities; the light drawing-room comedy on the 
edge of farce was his kingdom; there he ruled as 
a sovereign. 

Anyone who has read Oscar Wilde’s plays at 
all carefully, especially ‘The Importance of Be- 
ing Earnest,” must, I think, see that in kindly, 
happy humour he is without a peer in liter- 
ature. Who can ever forget the scene between 
the town and country girl in that delightful 
farce-comedy. As soon as the London girl real- 
ises that the country girl has hardly any oppor- 
tunity of making new friends or meeting new 
men, she exclaims: 

** Ah! now I know what they mean when they 
talk of agricultural depression.” 

This sunny humour is Wilde’s especial con- 
tribution to literature: he calls forth a smile 
whereas others try to provoke laughter. Yet he 
was as witty as anyone of whom we have record, 
and some of the best epigrams in English are his. 
“The tynic knows the price of everything and 
the value of nothing” is better than the best of 
La Rochefoucauld, as good as the best of Vau- 


5 


416 OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 


venargues or Joubert. He was as wittily urbane — 
as Congreve. But all the witty things that one — 
man can say may be numbered on one’s fingers. 
It was through his humour that Wilde reigned 
supreme. It was his humour that lent his talk 
its singular attraction. He was the only man 
I have ever met or heard of who could keep one 
smiling with amusement hour after hour. True, 
much of the humour was merely verbal, but it 
was always gay and genial: summer-lightning 
humour, I used to call it, unexpected, dazzling, 
full of colour yet harmless. 

Let me try and catch here some of the fleeting 
iridescence of that radiant spirit. Some years 
before I had been introduced to Mdlle. Marie 
Anne de Bovet by Sir Charles Dilke. M«dlle. 
de Bovet was a writer of talent and knew 
English uncommonly well; but in spite of 
masses of fair hair and vivacious eyes she was 
certainly very plain. As soon as she heard I was 
in Paris, she asked me to present Oscar Wilde to 
her. He had no objection, and so I made a 
meeting between them. When he caught sight 
of her, he stopped short: seeing his astonishment, 
she cried to him in her quick, abrupt way: 

““N’est-ce pas, M. Wilde, que je suis la femme 
la plus laide de France?” (Come, confess, 
Mr. Wilde, that I am the ugliest woman in 
France.) 


OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 417 


Bowing low, Oscar replied with smiling cour- 
tesy : 

“Du monde, Madame, du monde.” (In the 
world, madame, in the world.) 

No one could help laughing; the retort was 
irresistible. He should have said: ‘‘Au monde, 
madame, au monde,” but the meaning was clear. 

Sometimes this thought-quickness and happy 
dexterity had to be used in self-defence. Jean 
Lorrain was the wittiest talker | have ever 
heard in France, and a most brilliant journalist. 
His life was as abandoned as it could well be; 
in fact, he made a parade of strange vices. In 
the days of Oscar’s supremacy he always pre- 
tended to be a friend and admirer. About this 
time Oscar wanted me to know Stephane 
~Mallarme. He took me to his rooms one after- 
noon when there was a reception. ‘There were 
a great many people present. Mallarme was 
standing at the other end of the room leaning 
against the chimney piece. Near the door was 
Lorrain, and we both went towards him, Oscar 
with outstretched hands: 

“Delighted to see you, Jean.” 

For some reason or other, most probably out 
of tawdry vanity, Lorrain folded his arms theat- 
rically and replied: 

“T regret I cannot. say as much: I can no 
longer be one of your friends, M. Wilde.” 


4.18 OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 


The insult was stupid, brutal; yet everyone 
was on tiptoe to see how Oscar would answer 
it. hes 

“How true that is,”’ he said quietly, as quickly 
as if he had expected the traitor-thrust, “‘how 
true and how sad! At a certain time in life all 
of us who have done anything like you and me, 
Lorrain, must realise that we no longer have 
any friends in this world; but only lovers.” 
(Plus d’amis, seulement des amants.) 

A smile of approval lighted up every face. 

“Well said, well said,’ was the general ex- 
clamation. His humour was almost invariably 
generous, kind. 

One day in a Paris studio the conversation 
turned on the character of Marat: one French- 
man would have it that he was a fiend, another 
saw in him the incarnation of the revolution, a 
third insisted that he was merely the gamin of 
the Paris streets grown up. Suddenly one turned 
to Oscar, who was sitting silent, and asked his 
opinion: he took the ball at once, gravely. 

“Ce malheureux! Il navait pas de veine— 
pour une fois qwil a pris un bain . . .”’ (Poor 
devil, he was unlucky! To come to such grief 
for once taking a bath.) 

For a little while Oscar was interested in the 
Dreyfus case, and especially in the Com- 
mandant Esterhazy, who played such a prom- 


OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 419 


inent part in it with the infamous bordereau 
which brought about the conviction of Dreyfus. 
Most Frenchmen now know that the bordereau 
was a forgery and without any real value. 

I was curious to see Esterhazy, and Oscar 
brought him to lunch one day at Durand’s. 
He was a little below middle height, extremely 
thin and as dark as any Italian, with an enor- 
mous hook nose and heavy jaw. He looked tome 
like some foul bird of prey: greed and cunning 
in the restless brown eyes set close together, 
quick resolution in the out-thrust, bony jaws 
and hard chin; but manifestly he had no capac- 
ity, no mind: he was meagre in all ways. Fora 
long time he bored us by insisting that Dreyfus 
ivas a2 traitor, a jew, and a German; to him a 
trinity of faults, whereas he, Esterhazy, was 
perfectly innocent and had been very badly 
treated. At length Oscar leant across the table 
and said to him in French with, strange to say, 
a slight Irish accent, not noticeable when he 
spoke English: 

Mm ihesinnecent,’ he said, “always suffer, 
M. le Commandant; it is their metier. Besides, 
we are all innocent till we are found out; it is 
a poor, common part to play and within the com- 
pass of the meanest. ‘The interesting thing 
surely is to be guilty and so wear as a halo 
the seduction of sin.” 


420 OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 


Esterhazy appeared put out for a moment, 
and then he caught the genial gaiety of the 
reproof and the hint contained in it. His 
vanity would not allow him to remain long in 
a secondary role, and so, to our amazement, he 
suddenly broke out: 

“Why should I not make my confession to 
you? I will. It is I, Esterhazy, who alone am 
guilty. Il wrote the bordereau. I put Dreyfus 
in prison, and all France can not liberate him. 
I am the maker of the plot, and the chief part 
in it is mine.” 

To his surprise we both roared with laughter. 
The influence of the larger nature on the 
smaller to such an extraordinary issue was irre- 
sistibly comic. At the time no one even sus- 
pected Esterhazy in connection with the bor- 
dereau. 

Another example, this time of Oscar’s wit, 
may find a place here. Sir Lewis Morris was a 
voluminous poetaster with a common mind. He 
once bored Oscar by complaining that his 
books were boycotted by the press; after giv- 
ing several instances of unfair treatment he 
burst out: “There’s a conspiracy against me, 
a conspiracy of silence; but what can one do? 
What should I dor” 

“Join it,’ replied Oscar smiling. 

Oscar’s humour was for the most part intel- 


OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS A2I 


lectual, and something like it can be found 
in others, though the happy fecundity and light- 
some gaiety of it belonged to the individual 
temperament and perished with him. [I re- 
member once trying to give an idea of the 
different sides of his humour, just to see how 
far it could be imitated. 

I made believe to have met him at Paddington, 
aiter his release from Reading, though he was 
brought to Pentonville in private clothes by a 
warder on May 18th, and was released early 
the next morning, two years to the hour from 
the commencement of the Sessions at which he 
was convicted on May 25th. The Act says 
that you must be released from the prison in 
which you are first confined. I pretended, 
however, that I had met him. The train, I 
said, ran into Paddington Station early in the 
morning. I went across to him as he got out 
of the carriage: grey dawn filled the vast echo- 
ing space; a few porters could be seen scat- 
tered about; it was all chill and depressing. 

“Welcome, welcome, Oscar!” I cried holding 
out my hands. “I am sorry I’m alone. You 
ought to have been met by troops of boys and 
girls flower-crowned, but alas! you will have to 
content yourself with one middle-aged ad- 
mirer.”’ 

Pes, it’s really terrible, Frank,” he replied 


422 \ OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 


gravely. “If England persists in treating her 
criminals like this, she does not deserve to have 
ve atte 

“Ah,” said an old lady to him one day at 
lunch, “I know you people who pretend to be 
a great deal worse than you are, I know you. I 
shouldn’t be afraid of you.” 

“Naturally we pretend to be bad, dear lady,” 
he replied; “‘it is the only way to make ourselves 
interesting to you. Everyone believes a man 
who pretends to be good, he is such a bore; but 
no one believes a man who says he is evil. That 
makes him interesting.” 

“Oh, you are too clever for me,” replied the 
old lady nodding her head. ‘“‘ You see in my 
day none of us went to Girton and Newnham. © 
There were no schools then for the higher edu- 
cation of women.” 

“How absurd such schools are, are they 
not?” cried Oscar. “Were I a despot, I should 
immediately establish schools for the lower 
education of women. ‘That’s what they need. 
It usually takes ten years living with a man to 
complete a woman’s education.” 

“Then what would you do,” asked someone, 
“about the lower education of man?” 

“That’s already provided for, my dear fellow, 
amply provided for; we have our public schools 
and universities to see to that. What we want 


OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 423 


are schools for the higher education of men, and 
schools for the lower education of women.” 

Genial persiflage of this sort was his particular 
forte whether my imitation of it is good or bad. 

His kindliness was ingrained. I never heard 
him say a gross or even a vulgar word, hardly 
even a sharp or unkind thing. Whether in com- 
pany or with one person, his mind was all dedi- 
cated to genial, kindly, flattering thoughts. He 
hated rudeness or discussion or insistence as he 
hated ugliness or deformity. 

One evening of this summer a trivial incident 
showed me that he was sinking deeper in the 
mud-honey of life. 

A new play was about to be given at the 
Francais and because he expressed a wish to 
see it I bought a couple of tickets. We went 
in and he made me change places with him in 
lorder to be able to talk to me; he was growing 
nearly deaf in the bad ear. After the first act 
we went outside to smoke a cigarette. 

“It’s stupid,’ Oscar began, “fancy us two 
going in there to listen to what that foolish 
Frenchman says about love; he knows nothing 
about it; either of us could write much better 
on the theme. Let’s walk up and down here 
under the columns and talk.” 

The people began to go into the theatre 
again and, as they were disappearing, I said: 


4.24 OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 


“Tt seems rather a pity to waste our tickets; 
so many wish to see the play.” 

“We shall find someone to give them to,” he 
said indifferently, stopping by one of the pillars. 

At that very moment as if under his hand 
appeared a boy of about fifteen or sixteen, one 
of the gutter-snipe of Paris. Tomy amazement, 
he said: 

“Bon soir, Monsieur Wilde.” 

Oscar turned to him smiling. 

“Vous étes Jules, n’est-ce pas?” (you are 
Jules, aren’t you?) he questioned. 

“Oui, M. Wilde.” 

“Here is the very boy you want,” Oscar 
cried; “‘let’s give him the tickets, and he’ll sell 
them, and make something out of them,” and 
Oscar turned and began to explain to the boy 
how I had given two hundred francs for the 
tickets, and how, even now, they should be 
worth a louis or two. 

‘Des jaunets”’ (yellow boys), cried the youth, 
his sharp face lighting up, and in a flash he had 
vanished with the tickets. 

“You see he knows me, Frank,” said Oscar, 
with the childish pleasure of gratified vanity. 

“Yes,” I replied drily, “not an acquaintance 
to be proud of, J should think.” 

““T don’t agree with you, Frank,” he said, 
resenting my tone, “did you notice his eyes? 


OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 425 


He is one of the most beautiful boys I have ever 
seen; an exact replica of Emilienne D’Alencon,! 
I call him Jules D’Alencon, and I tell her he 
must be her brother. I had them both dining 
_ with me once and the boy is finer than the girl, 
his skin far more beautiful. 

“By the way,” he went on, as we were walking 
up the Avenue de l’Opera, “‘why should we not 
see Emilienne; why should she not sup with us, 
and you could compare them? She is playing at 
Olympia, near the Grand Hotel. Let’s go and 
compare Aspasia and Agathon, and for once I shall 
be Alcibiades, and you the moralist, Socrates.” 

“YT would rather talk to you,” I replied. 

“We can talk afterwards, Frank, when all 
the stars come out to listen; now is the time to 
live and enjoy.” 

“As you will,” I said, and we went to the 
Music Hall and got a box, and he wrote a little 
note to Emilienne D’Alencon, and she came 
afterwards to supper with us. ‘Though her 
face was pretty she was pre-eminently dull and 
uninteresting without two ideas in her bird’s 
head. She was all greed and vanity, and could 
talk of nothing but the hope of getting an engage- 
ment in London: could he help her, or would 
Monsieur, referring to me, as a journalist get 


1Qne of the prettiest daughters of the game to be found in Paris at 
the time, 


426 OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 


her some good puffs in advance? Oscar prom- 
ised everything gravely. 

While we were supping inside, Oscar caught 
sight of the boy passing along the Boulevard. 
At once he tapped on the window, loud enough 
to attract his attention. Nothing loth, the boy 
came in, and the four of us had supper together 
—a strange quartette. 

““Now, Frank,” said Oscar, “‘compare the 
two faces and you will see the likeness,” and 
indeed there was in both the same Greek 
beauty—the same regularity of feature, the same 
low brow and large eyes, the same perfect oval. 

“T am telling my friend,” said Oscar to 
Emilienne in French, “‘ how alike you two are, true 
brother and sister in beauty and in the finest of 
arts, the art of living,” and they both laughed. 

‘The boy is better looking,”’ he went on to me 
in English. ‘‘Her mouth is coarse and hard; her 
hands common, while the boy is quite perfect.” 

‘Rather dirty, don’t you think?” I could not 
help remarking. 

“Dirty, of course, but that’s nothing; noth- 
ing is so immaterial as colouring; form is every- 
thing, and his form is perfect, as exquisite as 
the David of Donatello. That’s what he’s like, 
Frank, the David of Donatello,” and he pulled his 
jowl, delighted to have found the painting word. 

As soon as Emilienne saw that we were 


OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 427 


_ talking of the boy, her interest in the conversa- 
tion vanished, even more quickly than her 
appetite. She had to go, she said suddenly; she 
was so sorry, and the discontented curiosity of 
her look gave. place again to the smirk of af- 
fected politeness. 

** Au revoir, n’est-ce pas? a Charing Cross, n’est- 
ce-pas, Monsieur? Vous ne moublierez pas? ...” 

As we turned to walk along the boulevard 
I noticed that the boy, too, had disappeared. 
The moonlight was playing with the leaves and 
boughs of the plane trees and throwing them 
in Japanese shadow-pictures on the pavement: 
I was given over to thought; evidently Oscar 
imagined I was offended, for he launched out 
into a panegyric on Paris. 

“The most wonderful city in the world, 
the only civilised capital; the only place on earth 
where you find absolute toleration for all hu- 
man frailties, with passionate admiration for all 
human virtues and capacities. 

“Do you remember Verlaine, Frank? His 
life was nameless and terrible, he did every- 
thing to excess, was drunken, dirty and de- 
bauched, and yet there he would sit in a café 
on the Boul’ Mich’, and everybody who came 
in would bow to him, and call him maitre and 
be proud of any sign of recognition from him 

because he was a great poet. 


428 OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 


“In England they would have murdered 
Verlaine, and men who call themselves gentle- 
men would have gone out of their way to insult 
him in public. England is still only half- 
civilised; Englishmen touch life at one or two 
points without suspecting its complexity. They 
are rude and harsh.” 

All the while I could not help thinking of 
Dante and his condemnation of Florence, and 
its “hard, malignant people,” the people who 
still had something in them of “the mountain 
and rock” of their birthplace:—“E tiene ancor 
del monte e del macigno.”’ 

“You are not offended, Frank, are you, with 
me, for making you meet two caryatides of the 
Parisian temple of pleasure?” 

“No, no,” I cried, “I was thinking how Dante 
condemned Florence and its people, its ungrate- 
ful malignant people, and how when his teacher, 
Brunetto Latini, and his companions came to 
him in the underworld, he felt as if he, too, 
must throw himself into the pit with them. 
Nothing prevented him from carrying out his 
good intention (buona voglia) except the fear of 
being himself burned and baked as they were. 
I was just thinking that it was his great love 
for Latini which gave him the deathless words: 


oe marek ‘“‘Non dispetto, ma doglia 
La vostra condizion dentro mi fisse. 


OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 429 


“Not contempt but sorrow. .... 

“Oh, Frank,’ cried Oscar, “‘what a beautiful 
incident! I remember it all. I read it this last 
Migeerin Naples: ..<.. Of course Dante was 
full of pity as are all great poets, for they know 
the weakness of human nature.” 

But even “the sorrow” of which Dante spoke 
seemed to carry with it some hint of condemna- 
tion; for after a pause he went on: 

“You must not judge me, Frank: you don’t 
know what I have suffered. No wonder I snatch 
now at enjoyment with both hands. They did 
terrible things to me. Did you know that when 
I was arrested the police let the reporters come 
to the cell and stare at me. Think of it—the 
degradation and the shame—as if I had been 
a monster on show. Oh! you knew! Then you 
know, too, how I was really condemned before 
I was tried; and what a farce my trial was. 
That terrible judge with his insults to those he 
was sorry he could not send to the scaffold. 

I never told you the worst thing that befell 
me. When they took me from Wandsworth to 
Reading, we had to stop at Clapham Junction. 
We were nearly an hour waiting for the train. 
There we sat on the platform. I was in the 
hideous prison clothes, handcuffed between two 
warders. You know how-the trains come in 
every minute. Almost at once I was recognised, 


430 OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 


and there passed before me a continual stream 
of men and boys, and one after the other offered 
some foul sneer or gibe or scoff. They stood 
before me, Frank, calling me names and spit- 
ting on the ground—an eternity of torture.” 

My heart bled for him. 

“T wonder if any punishment will teach hu- 
manity to such people, or understanding of 
their own baseness?”’ 

After walking a few paces he turned to me: 

“Don’t reproach me, Frank, even in thought. 
You have no right to. You don’t know me yet. 
Some day you will know more and then you 
will be sorry, so sorry that there will be no 
room for any reproach of me. If I could tell 
you what I suffered this winter!” 

“This winter!’ I cried. “In Naples?” 

“Yes, in gay, happy Naples. It was last 
autumn that I really fell to ruin. I had come 
out of prison filled with good intentions, with 
all good resolutions. My wife had promised to 
come back tome. I hoped she would come very 
soon. If she had come at once, if she only had, 
it might all have been different. But she did 
not come. I have no doubt she was right from > 
her point of view. She has always been right. 

‘But I was alone there in Berneval, and Bosie 
kept on calling me, calling, and as you know 
I went to him. At first it was all wonderful. 
The bruised leaves began to unfold in the light 


OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 431 


and warmth of affection; the sore feeling began 
to die out of me. 

“But at once my allowance from my wife 
was stopped. Yes, Frank,” he said, with a 
touch of the old humour, “they took it away 
when they should have doubled it. I did not 
care. When I had money I gave it to him 
without counting, so when I could not pay I 
thought Bosie would pay, and I was content. 
But at once I discovered that he expected me 
to find the money. I did what I could; but 
when my means were exhausted, the evil days 
began. He expected me to write plays and get 
money for us both as in the past; but I couldn’t; 
I simply could not. When we were dunned his 
temper went to pieces. He has never known 
what it is to want really. You have no con- 
ception of the wretchedness of it all. He has 
a terrible, imperious, irritable temper.” 

“Te’s the son of his father,’ I interjected. 

f yes, said Oscar, “I am afraid that’s the 
truth, Frank; he is the son of his father; violent, 
and irritable, with a tongue like a lash. As soon 
as the means of life were straitened, he became 
sullen and began reproaching me; why didn’t 
I write? Why didn’t I earn money? What was 
the good of me? As if I could write under such 
conditions. No man, Frank, has ever suffered 
worse shame and humiliation. 

‘At last there was a washing bill to be paid; 


432 OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 


Bosie was dunned for it, and when I came in, 
he raged and whipped me with his tongue. It 
was appalling; I had done everything for him, 
given him everything, lost everything, and now 
I could only stand and see love turned to hate: 
the strength of love’s wine making the bitter 
more venomous. ‘Then he left me, Frank, and 
now there is no hope for me. I am lost, finished, 
a derelict floating at the mercy of the stream, 
without plan or purpose. . . . And the worst 
of it is, I know, if men have treated me badly, I 
have treated myself worse; it is our sins against 
ourselves we can never forgive. ... Do you 
wonder that I snatch at any pleasure?” 

He turned and looked at me all shaken; I 
saw the tears pouring down his cheeks. 

“T cannot talk any more, Frank,” he said in © 
a broken voice, “I must go.” 

I called a cab. My heart was so heavy 
within me, so sore, that I said nothing to stop 
him. He lifted his hand to me in sign of fare- 
well, and I turned again to walk home alone, 
understanding, for the first time in my life, the 
full significance of the marvellous line in which 
Shakespeare summed up his impeachment of 
the world and his own justification: the only — 
justification of any of us mortals: 

‘““A man more sinn’d against than sinning.” 


CHAPTER XXI 


Tue more I considered the matter, the more 
clearly I saw, or thought I saw, that the only 
chance of salvation for Oscar was to get him to 
work, to give him some purpose in life, and the 
reader should remember here that at this time | 
had not read “De Profundis” and did not know 
that Oscar in prison had himself recognised this 
necessity. After all, I said to myself, nothing is 
lost if he will only begin to write. A man should 
be able to whistle happiness and hope down the 
wind and take despair to his bed and heart, and 
Win courage from his harsh companion. Hap- 
piness is not essential to the artist: happiness 
never creates anything but memories. Ii Oscar 
would work and not brood over the past and 
study himself like an Indian Fakir, he might yet 
come to soul-health and achievement. He could 
win back everything; his own respect, and the 
respect of his fellows, if indeed that were worth 
winning. An artist, I knew, must have at 
least the self-abnegation of the hero, and heroic 
resolution to strive and strive, or he will never 
bring it far even in his art. If I could only get 
Oscar to work, it seemed to me everything 

433 


434 OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 


might yet come right. I spent a week with him, 
lunching and dining and putting all this before 
him, in every way. 

I noticed that he enjoyed the good eating 
and the good drinking as intensely as ever. 
He was even drinking too much I thought, was 
beginning to get stout and flabby again, but 
the good living was a necessity to him, and 
it certainly did not prevent him from talking 
charmingly. But as soon as I pressed him to 
write he would shake his head: 

“Oh, Frank, I cannot, you know my rooms; 
how could I write there? A horrid bedroom 
like a closet, and a little sitting room without 
any outlook. Books everywhere; and no 
place to write; to tell you the truth I cannot 
even read init. I can do nothing in such miser- 
able poverty.” 

Again and again he came back to this. He 
harped upon his destitution, so that I could not 
but see purpose in it. He was already cunning 
in the art of getting money without asking for 
it. My heart ached for him; one goes down 
hill with such fatal speed and ease, and the mire 
at the bottom is so loathsome. I hastened to 
say: 

“I can let you have a little money; but you 
ought to work, Oscar. After all why should 
anyone help you, if you will not help yourself? 


OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 435 


If I cannot aid you to save yourself, I am only 
doing you harm.” 

*“A base sophism, Frank, mere sophistry, 
as you know: a good lunch is better than a bad 
one for any living man.” 

I smiled, “Don’t do yourself injustice: you 
could easily gain thousands and live like a 
prince again. Why not make the effort?” 

“Tf I had pleasant, sunny rooms I’d try. .... 
It’s harder than you think.” 

‘Nonsense, it’s easy for you. Your punish- 
ment has made your name known in every 
country in the world. A book of yours would 
sell like wildfire; a play of yours would draw in 
any capital. You might live here like a prince. 
Shakespeare lost love and friendship, hope and 
health to boot—everything, and yet forced him- 
self to write “The Tempest.’ Why can’t you?” 

“Vl try, Frank, Pll try.” 

I may just mention here that any praise of 
another man, even of Shakespeare, was sure to 
move Oscar to emulation. He acknowledged no 
superior. In some articles in The Saturday 
Review I had said that no one had ever given 
completer record of himself than Shakespeare. 
“We know him better than we know any of our 
contemporaries,’ I went on, “‘and he is better 
worth knowing.” At once Oscar wrote to me 
objecting to this phrase. “Surely, Frank, you 


436 OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 


have forgotten me. Surely, I am better worth 
knowing than Shakespeare?”’ 

The question astonished me so that I could 
not make up my mind at once; but when he 
pressed me later I had to tell him that Shake- 
speare had reached higher heights of thought 
and feeling than any modern, though I was 
probably wrong in saying that I knew him bet- 
ter than I knew a living man. 

I had to go back to England and some little 
time elapsed before I could return to Paris; 
but I crossed again early in the summer, and 
found he had written nothing. 

I often talked with him about it; but now he 
changed his ground a little. 

“T can’t write, Frank. When I take up my — 
pen all the past comes back: I cannot bear the 
thoughts . . . regret and remorse, like twin 
dogs, wait to seize me at any idle moment. I 
must go out and watch life, amuse, interest 
myself, or I should go mad. You don’t know 
how sore it is about my heart, as soon as I am 
alone. I am face to face with my own soul; the 
Oscar of four years ago, with his beautiful se- 
cure life, and his glorious easy triumphs, comes 
up before me, and I cannot stand the contrast. 

My eyes burn with tears. If you care 
for me, Frank, you will not ask me to write.” 

“You promised to try,” I said somewhat 


OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS A37 


harshly, “‘and I want you to try. You haven’t 
suffered more than Dante suffered in exile and 
poverty; yet you know if he had suffered ten 
times as much, he would have written it all 
down. ‘Tears, indeed! the fire in his eyes would 
have dried the tears.” 

“True enough, Frank, but Dante was all of 
one piece whereas I am drawn in two different 
directions. J was born to sing the joy and 
pride of life, the pleasure of living, the delight 
in everything beautiful in this most beautiful 
world, and they took me and tortured me till 
I learned pity and sorrow. Now I cannot sing 
the joy, heartily, because I know the suffering, 
and I was never made to sing of suffering. I 
hate it, and I want to sing the love songs of joy 
and pleasure. It is joy alone which appeals to 
my soul; the joy of life and beauty and love— 
I could sing the song of Apollo the Sun-God, 
and they try to force me to sing the song of the 
tortured Marsyas.”’ 

This to me was his true and final confession. 
His second fall after leaving prison had put 
him “at war with himself.” This is, I think, 
the very heart of truth about his soul; the song 
of sorrow, of pity and renunciation was not his 
song, and the experience of suffering prevented 
him from singing the delight of life and the 
joy he took in beauty. It never seemed to occur 


438 | OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 


to him that he could reach a faith which should 
include both self-indulgence and renunciation in 
a larger acceptance of life. 

‘In spite of his sunny nature he had a certain 
amount of jealousy and envy in him which was 
always brought to light by the popular success 
of those whom he had known and measured. 
I remember his telling me once that he wrote 
his first play because he was annoyed at the 
way Pinero was being praised—‘Pinero, who 
can’t write at all: he is a stage-carpenter and 
nothing else. His characters are made of dough; 
and never was there such a worthless style, or 
rather such a complete absence of style: he 
writes like a grocer’s assistant.” 

I noticed now that this trait of jealousy was 
stronger in him than ever. One day I showed 
him an English illustrated paper which I had 
bought on my way to lunch. It contained a 
picture of George Curzon (I beg his pardon, 
Lord Curzon) as Viceroy of India. He was pho- 
tographed in a carriage with his wife by his side: 
the gorgeous state carriage drawn by four 
horses, with outriders, and escorted by cavalry and 
cheering crowds—all the paraphernalia and 
pomp of imperial power. 

“Do you see that?” cried Oscar anenlys 
“fancy George Curzon being treated like that. 
I know him well; a more perfect example of 


OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 439 


plodding mediocrity was never seen in the 
world. He had never a thought or phrase above 
the common.” 

“T know him pretty well, too,” I replied. “His 
incurable commonness is the secret of his success. 
He ‘voices,’ as he would say himself, the opinion 
of the average man on every subject. He might 
be a leader-writer on the Mail or Times. What 
do you know of the average man or of his opin- 
ions? But the man in the street, as he is called 
to-day, can only learn from the man who is 
just one step above himself, and so the George 
Curzons come to success in life. That, too, is 
the secret of the popularity of this or that 
writer. Hall Caine is an even larger George 
Curzon, a better endowed mediocrity.” 

“But why should he have fame and state 
and power?” Oscar cried indignantly. 

“State and power, because he is George 
Curzon, but fame he never will have, and I 
suspect if the truth were known, in the moments 
when he too comes face to face with his own 
soul, as you say, he would give a good deal of his 
state and power for a very little of your fame.” 

“That is probably true, Frank,” cried Oscar, 
‘that is almost certainly the crumpled rose-leaf 
of his couch, but how grossly he is over-estimated 
and over-rewarded..... Do you know Wil- 
fred Blunt?” 


440 OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 


“T have met him,” I replied, “but don’t 
know him. We met once and he bragged pre- 
posterously about his Arab ponies. I was at 
that time editor of The Evening News: and Mr. 
Blunt tried hard to talk down to my level.” 

‘“‘He is by way of being a poet, and he has 
a very real love of literature.” 

“TI know,” I said; ‘‘I really know his work 
and a good deal about him and have nothing 
but praise for the way he championed the 
Egyptians, and for his poetry when he has any- 
thing to say.” 

“Well, Frank, he had a sort of club at Crab- 
bett Park, a club for poets, to which only 
poets were invited, and he was a most admir- 
able and perfect host. Lady Blunt could never 
make out what he was up to. He used to get 
us all down to Crabbett, and the poet who was 
received last had to make a speech about the 


new poet—a speech in which he was supposed 


to tell the truth about the new-comer. Blunt 
took the idea, no doubt, from the custom of the 
French Academy. Well, he asked me down to 
Crabbett Park, and George Curzon, if you 
please, was the poet picked to make the speech 
about me.” 

““Good God,” I cried, “‘Curzon a poet. It’s 
like Kitchener being taken for a great captain, 
or Salisbury for a statesman.” 


Sees t 


OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 44I 


“He writes verses, Frank, but of course there 
is not a line of poetry in him: his verses are 
good enough though, well-turned, I mean, and 
sharp, if not witty. Well, Curzon had to make 
this speech about me after dinner. We had a 
delightful dinner, quite perfect, and then Cur- 
zon got up. He had evidently prepared his 
speech carefully, it was bristling with innuen- 
does; sneering side-hits at strange sins. Every- 
one looked at his fellow and thought the speech 
the height of bad taste. 

** Mediocrity always detests ability, and loathes 
genius; Curzon wanted to prove to himself that 
at any rate in the moralities he was my superior. 

“When he sat down I had to answer him. 
‘That was the programme. Of course I had not 
prepared a speech, had not thought about Cur- 
zon, or what he might say, but I got up, Frank, 
and told the kindliest truth about him, and 
everyone took it for the bitterest sarcasm, and 
cheered and cheered me, though what I said 
was merely the truth. I told how difficult it 
was for Curzon to work and study at Oxford. 
Everyone wanted to know him because of his 
position, because he was going into Parliament, 
and certain to make a great figure there; and 
everyone tried to make up to him, but he 
knew that he must not yield to such seduc- 
tion, so he sat in his room with a wet towel 


442 OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 


about his head, and worked and worked with- 
out ceasing. 

“In the earlier examinations, which demand 
only memory, he won first honours. But even 
success could not induce him to relax his ef- 
forts; he lived laborious days and took every 
college examination seriously; he made out dates 
in red ink, and hung them on his wall, and 
learnt pages of uninteresting events and put 
them in blue ink in his memory, and at last 
came out of the ‘ Final Schools’ with second hon- 
ours. And now, I concluded, ‘this model youth 
is going into life, and he is certain to treat it 
seriously, certain to win at any rate second 
honours in it, and have a great and praise- 
worthy career.’ : 

‘Frank, they roared with laughter, and, to do 
Curzon justice, at the end he came up to me and 
apologised, and was charming. Indeed, they all 
made much of me and we had a great night. 

‘““T remember we talked all the night through, 
or rather I talked and everyone else listened, 
for the great principle of the division of labour 
is beginning to be understood in English Society. 
The host gives excellent food, excellent wine, 
excellent cigarettes, and super-excellent coffee, 
that’s his part, and all the men listen, that’s 
theirs: while I talk and the stars twinkle their 
delight. 


OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 443 


“Wyndham was there, too; you know George 
Wyndham, with his beautiful face and fine 
figure: he is infinitely cleverer than Curzon but 
he has not Curzon’s push and force, or perhaps, 
as you say, he is not in such close touch with the 
average man as Curzon; he was charming to me. 

“In the morning: we all trooped out to see 
the dawn, and some of the young ones, wild 
with youth and high spirits, Curzon of course 
among the number, stripped off their clothes and 
rushed down to the lake and began swimming 
and diving about like a lot of schoolboys. 
There is a great deal of the schoolboy in all 
Englishmen, that is what makes them so lovable. 
When they came out they ran over the grass 
to dry themselves, and then began playing lawn 
tennis, just as they were, stark naked, the future 
rulers of England. I shall never forget the 
scene. Wilfred Blunt had gone up to his wife’s 
apartments and had changed into some fan- 
tastic pyjamas; suddenly he opened an upper 
window and came out and perched himself, 
cross-legged, on the balcony, looking down at 
the mad game of lawn tennis, for all the world 
like a sort of pink and green Buddha, while I 
strolled about with someone, and ordered fresh 
coffee and talked till the dawn came with silent 
silver feet lighting up the beautiful greenery of 
the park. . 


444 OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 


“Now George Curzon plays king in India: 


, . sini 
a a Pore 
ay Sc a oe ee Sore 


Wyndham is on the way to power, and ’m ~ 
hiding in shame and poverty here in Paris, an 


exile and outcast. Do you wonder that I 


cannot write, Frank? The awful injustice of life — 


maddens me. After all, what have they done 
in comparison with what I have done? 

“Close the eyes of all of us now and fifty 
years hence, or a hundred years hence, no one 
will know anything about Curzon or Wyndham 
or Blunt: whether they lived or died will be a 
matter of indifference to everyone; but my com- 
edies and my stories and ‘The Ballad of Reading 


Gaol’ will be known and read by millions, and 


even my unhappy fate will call forth world-wide 
sympathy.” 


It was all true enough, and good to keep in ~ 


mind; but even when Oscar spoke of greater men 
than himself, he took the same attitude: his selt- 
esteem was extraordinary. He did not compare 
his work with that of others; was not anxious to 
find his true place, as even Shakespeare was. 
From the beginning, from youth on, he was con- 
vinced that he was a great man and going to do 
great things. Many of us have the same belief 
and are just as persuaded, but the belief is not 
ever present with us as it was with Oscar, mould- 
ing all his actions. For instance,.I remarked once 
that his handwriting was unforgettable and char- 


OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 445 


Beceristic. “I worked at it,” he said, “as a boy; 
I wanted a distinctive handwriting; it had to be 
clear and beautiful and peculiar to me. At 
length I got it but it took time and patience. I 
always wanted everything about me to be dis- 
tinctive,”’ he added, smiling. 

He was proud of his physical appearance, 
inordinately pleased with his great height, vain 
of it even. “Height gives distinction,” he 
declared, and once even went so far as to say, 
“One can’t picture Napoleon as small; one 
thinks only of his magnificent head and forgets 
the little podgy figure; it must have been a great 
nuisance to him: small men have no dignity.” 

All this utterly unconscious of the fact that 
most tall men have no ever present sense of their 
height as an advantage. Yet on the whole one 
agrees with Montaigne that height is the chief 
beauty of a man: it gives presence. 

Oscar never learned anything from criticism; 
he had a good deal of personal dignity in spite 
of his amiability, and when one found fault with 
his work, he would smile vaguely or change the 
subject as if it didn’t interest him. 

Again and again I played on his self-esteem 
to get him to write; but always met the same 
answer. 

“Oh, Frank, it’s impossible, impossible for 
me to work under these disgraceful conditions.” 


446 OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 


“But you can have better conditions now and 
lots of money if you’ll begin to work.” 

He shook his head despairingly. Again and 
again I tried, but failed to move him, even when 
I dangled money before him. I didn’t then know 
that he was receiving regularly more than £300 a 
year. I thought he was completely destitute, de- 
pendent on such casual help as friends could give 
him. I havea letter from him about this time ask- 
ing me for even £5! as if he were in extremest need. 

On one of my visits to Paris after discussing 
his position, I could not help saying to him: | 

“The only thing that will make you write, 
Oscar, is absolute, blank poverty. ‘That’s the 
sharpest spur after all—necessity.”’ 

“You don’t know me,” he replied sharply. 
“T would kill myself. I can endure to the end; 
but to be absolutely destitute would show me 
suicide as the open door.” 

Suddenly his depressed manner changed and 
his whole face lighted up. 

“Isn’t it comic, Frank, the way the English 
talk of the ‘open door,’ while their doors are 
always locked, and barred, and bolted, even 
their church doors? Yet it is not hypocrisy in 
them; they simply cannot see themselves as 
they are; they have no imagination.” 

A long pause, and he went on gravely: 


1Cfr. Appendix, 


OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 447 


‘Suicide, Frank, is always the temptation - 
the unfortunate, a great temptation.” 

“Suicide is hie natural end of the world- 
weary, I replied; “but you enjoy life intensely. 
For you to talk of suicide is ridiculous.” 

“Do you know that my wife is dead, Frank?’’} 

fenad heard it,’ I said. 

*“My way back to hope and a new life ends 
in her grave,” he went on. “Everything I do, 
Frank, is irrevocable.” 

He spoke with a certain grave sincerity. 

“The great tragedies of the world are all 
final and complete; Socrates would not escape 
death, though Crito opened the prison door for 
him. I could not avoid prison, though you 
showed me the way to safety. We are fated to 
suffer, don’t you think? as an example to human- 
ity—‘an echo and a light unto eternity.’ ”’ 

“T think it would be finer, instead of taking 
the punishment lying down, to trample it under 
your feet, and make it a rung of the ladder.” 

“Oh, Frank, you would turn all the tragedies 
into triumphs, you are a fighter. My life is 
done.” 

“You love life,”’ I cried, “‘as much as ever 
you did; more than anyone I have ever seen.”’ 

“It is true,” he cried, his face lighting up 
quickly, “‘more than anyone, Frank. Life de- 
lights me. ‘The people passing on the Boule- 

1See Appendix. 


448 OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 


vards, the play of the sunshine in the trees; 
the noise, the quick movement of the cabs, the 
costumes of the cochers and_ sergents-de-ville; 
workers and beggars, pimps and prostitutes—all 
please me to the soul, charm me, and if you 
would only let me talk instead of bothering me 
to write I should be quite happy. Why should I 
write any more? Ihave done enough for fame. 

“T will tell you a story, Frank,” he broke off, 
and he told me a slight thing about Judas. The 
little tale was told delightfully, with eloquent 
inflections of voice and still more eloquent 
PAUSES. Liye iaiite 

“The end of all this is,” I said before going 
back to London, “‘that you will not write?” 

“No, no, Frank,”’ he said, “‘that I cannot write 
under these conditions. If I had money enough; 
if I could shake off Paris, and forget those 
awful rooms of mine and get to the Riviera for 
the winter and live in some seaside village of the 
Latins with the blue sea at my feet, and the 
blue sky above, and God’s sunlight about me 
and no care for money, then I would write as 
naturally as a bird sings, because I should be 
happy and could not help it... . 

“You write stories taken from the fight of life; 
you are careless of surroundings, I am a poet 
and can only sing in the sunshine when I am 


happy.” 


OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 449 


“All right,” I said, snatching at the half- 
promise. “It is just possible that I may get 
hold of some money during the next few months, 
and, if I do, you shall go and winter in the 
South, and live as you please without care of 
money. If you can only sing when the cage is 
beautiful and sunlight floods it, I know the 
very place for you.” 

With this sort of vague understanding we 
parted for some months. 


CHAPTER XXII 
““’ GREAT ROMANTIC PASSION” 


THERE is no more difficult problem for the 
writer, no harder task than to decide how far he 
should allow himself to go in picturing human 
weakness. We have all come from the animal 
and can all without any assistance from books 
imagine easily enough the effects of unrestrained 
self-indulgence. Yet it is instructive and preg- 
nant with warning to remark that, as soon as the 


sheet anchor of high resolve is gone, the frail- 


ties of man tend to become master-vices. All our 
civilisation is artificially built up by effort; all 
high humanity is the reward of constant striving 
against natural desires. 

In the fall of this year, 1898, I sold The 
Saturday Review to Lord Hardwicke and _ his 
friends, and as soon as the purchase was com- 
pleted, I think in November, I wired to Oscar 
that I should be in Paris in a short time, 
and ready to take him to the South for his 
holiday. I sent him some money to pave the 
way. 

A few days later I crossed and wired to him 

450 


OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS A5I 


from Calais to dine with me at Durand’s, and 
to begin dinner if I happened to be late. 

While waiting for dinner, I said: 

“I want to stay two or three days in Paris 
to see some pictures. Would you be ready to 
start South on Thursday next?” It was then 
Monday, I think. 

“On Thursday?’ he repeated. “Yes, Frank, 
T think so.” 

“There is some money for anything you 
may want to buy,” I said and handed him a 
cheque I had made payable to self and signed, 
for he knew where he could cash it. 

“How good of you, Frank, I cannot thank 
you enough. You start on Thursday,” he added, 
as if considering it. 

“Tf you would rather wait a little,” I said, 
“say so: I’m quite willing.” 

“No, Frank, I think Thursday will do. We 
are really going to the South for the whole 
winter. How wonderful; how gorgeous it will 
be.” 

We had a great dinner and talked and talked. 
He spoke of some of the new Frenchmen, and 
at great length of Pierre Louys, whom he de- 
scribed as a disciple: 

“Tt was I, Frank, who induced him to write 
his ‘Aphrodite’ in prose.” He spoke, too, of 
the Grand Guignol Theatre. 


452 OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 


“Le Grand Guignol is the first theatre in 
Paris. It looks like a nonconformist chapel, 
a barn of a room with a gallery at the back and 
a little wooden stage. There you see the primi- 
tive tragedies of real life. They are as ugly 
and as fascinating as life itself. You must see 
it and we will go to Antoine’s as well: you 
must see Antoine’s new piece; he is doing great 
work.” 

We kept dinner up to an unconscionable hour. 
I had much to tell of London and much to hear 
of Paris, and we talked and drank coffee till one 
o’clock, and when I proposed supper Oscar ac- 
cepted the idea with enthusiasm. 

“T have often lunched with you from two 
o’clock till nine, Frank, and now I am going to 
dine with you from nine o’clock till breakfast 
to-morrow morning.” 

“What shall we drink?” I asked. 

“The same champagne, Frank, don’t you 
think?” he said, pulling his jowl; ‘‘there is no 
Wine so inspiring as that dry champagne with 
the exquisite bouquet. You were the first to 
say my plays were the champagne of literature.” 

When we came out it was three o’clock and 
I was tired and sleepy with my journey, and 
Oscar had drunk perhaps more than was good 
for him. Knowing how he hated walking I got 
a voiture de cercle and told him to take it, and 


. ia Te i 
a eee DS ee 


OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 453 


I would walk to my hotel. He thanked me and 
seemed to hesitate. 

“What is it now?”’ I asked, wanting to get to 
bed. 

“Just a word with you,” he said, and drew me 
away from the carriage where the chasseur was 
waiting with the rug. When he got me three or 
four paces away he said, hesitatingly: 

Prrank, could you. . ... can you let .me 
have a few pounds? I’m very hard up.” 

I stared at him; I had given him a cheque at 
the beginning of the dinner: had he forgotten? 
Or did he perchance want to keep the hundred 
pounds intact for some reason? Suddenly it oc- 
curred to me that he might be without even 
enough for the carriage. I took out a hundred 
franc note and gave it to him. 

“Thank you, so much,” he said, thrusting it 
into his waistcoat pocket, “‘it’s very kind of 
you.” 

“You will turn up to-morrow at lunch at 
one’ I said, as I put him into the’ little 
brougham. 

““Ves, of course, yes,” he cried, and I turned 
away. 

Next day at lunch he seemed to meet me with 
some embarrassment: 

“Frank, I want to ask you something. [’m 
really confused about last night; we dined most 


454 OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 


wisely, if too well. This morning I found you 
had given me a cheque, and I found besides in 
my waistcoat pocket a note for a hundred francs. 
Did I ask you for it at the end? ‘Tap’ you, the 
French call it,’’ he added, trying to laugh. 

I nodded. 

“How dreadful!” he cried. “How dreadful 
poverty is! I had forgotten that you had given 
me a cheque, and I was so hard up, so afraid you 
might go away without giving me anything, that 
I asked you for it. Isn’t poverty dreadful?” 

I nodded; I could not say a word: the fact 
told so much. 

The chastened mood of self-condemnation 
did not last long with him or go deep; soon he 
was talking as merrily and gaily as ever. 

Before parting I said to him: 

“You won’t forget that you are going on 
Thursday night?” 


]}?? 


“Oh, really!” he cried, to my surprise; 


“Thursday is very near; I don’t know whether 
I shall be able to come.” 

“What on earth do you mean?” I asked. 

“The truth is, you know, I have debts to pay, 
and I have not enough.” 

“But I will give you more,” I cried, ‘what 
will clear you?”’ 

“Fifty more I think will do. How good you 
are ly 


—_ 


OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 455 


“T will bring it with me to-morrow morning.” 

“In notes please, will you? French money. 
I find I shall want it to pay some little things 
at once, and the time is short.” 

I thought nothing of the matter. The next 
day at lunch I gave him the money in French 
notes. That night I said to him: 

“You know we are going away to-morrow 
evening: I hope you'll be ready? I have got the 
tickets for the Train de Luxe.” 

“Oh, I’m so sorry!’’ he cried, “I can’t be 
ready.” 

“What is it now?” I asked. 

“Well, it’s money. Some more debts have 
come in.” 

“Why will you not be frank with me, and 
tell me what you owe? I will give you a cheque 
for it. J don’t want to drag it out of you bit 
by bit. ‘Tell me a sum that will make you free, 
and I will give it to you. I want you to have a 
perfect six months, and how can you if you are 
bothered with debts?”’ 

“How kind you are to me! Do you really 
mean it?” 

“Of course I do.” 

“Really?” he said. 

= Yes, I said, “tell me what it 1s.” 

“T think, I believe . . . would another fifty 
be too much?’”’ 


456 OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 


“TY will give it you to-morrow. Are you sure 
that will be enough?”’ 

“Oh, yes, Frank; but let’s go on Sunday. 
Sunday is such a good day for travelling, and 
it’s always so dull everywhere, we might just 
as well spend it on the train. Besides, no one 
travels on Sunday in France, so we are sure 
to be able to take our ease in our train. Won’t 
Sunday do, Frank?” 

“Of course it will,” I replied laughing; but 
a day or two later he was again embarrassed, 
and again told me it was money, and then he 
confessed to me that he was afraid at first I 


should not have paid all his debts, if I had known 


how much they were, and so he thought by 
telling me of them little by little, he would 
make sure at least of something. This pitiful, 
pitiable confession depressed me on his account. 
It showed practice in such petty tricks and all 


too little pride. Of course it did not alter my ad- 


miration of his qualities; nor weaken in any de- 
gree my resolve to give him a fair chance. If 
he could be saved, I was determined to save him. 

We met at the Gare de Lyons on Sunday 
evening. I found he had dined at the buffet: 
there was a surprising number of empty bottles 
on the table; he seemed terribly depressed. 


“Someone was dining with me, Frank, a 


friend,” he offered by way of explanation. 


OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 457 


“Why did he not wait? I should like to have 
seen him.” 

“Oh, he was no one you would have cared 

about, Frank,” he replied. 
I sat with him and took a cup of coffee, 
whilst waiting for the train. He was wretchedly 
gloomy; scarcely spoke indeed; I could not make 
it out. From time to time he sighed heavily, 
and I noticed that his eyes were red, as if he 
had been crying. 

“What is the matter?” I asked. 

“T will tell you later, perhaps. It is very hard; 
parting is like dying,” and his eyes filled with 
tears. 

We were soon in the train running out into 
the night. I was as light-hearted as could be. 
At length I was free of journalism, I thought, 
-and I was going to the South to write my 
Shakespeare book, and Oscar would work, too, 
when the conditions were pleasant. But I could 
not win a single smile from him; he sat down- 
cast, sighing hopelessly from time to time. 
eee What on earth's the matter?” 1 cried. 

“‘Here you are going to the sunshine, to blue 
skies, and the wine-tinted Mediterranean, and 
you’re not content. We shall stop in a hotel 
near a little sun-baked valley running down to 
the sea. You walk from the hotel over a car- 
pet of pine needles, and when you get into the 


458 OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 


open, violets and anemones bloom about your 
feet, and the scent of rosemary and myrtle will 
be in your nostrils; yet instead of singing for 
joy the bird droops his feathers and hangs his 
head as if he had the ‘pip.’” 

“Oh, don’t,” he cried, ‘‘don’t,” and he looked 
at me with tears filling his eyes; “you don’t 
know, Frank, what a great romantic passion is.” 

“Ts that what you are suffering from?” 

“Yes, a great romantic passion.” 

““Good God!” I laughed; “who has inspired 
this new devotion?” 

“Don’t make fun of me, Frank, or I will 
not tell you; but if you will listen I will try to 
tell you all about it, for I think you should 
know, besides, | think telling it may ease my 
pain, so come into the cabin and listen. 

‘““Do you remember once in the summer you 
wired me from Calais to meet you at Maire’s 
restaurant, meaning to go afterwards to An- 
toine’s Theatre, and I was very late? You 
remember, the evening Rostand was dining at 
the next table. Well, it was that evening. I 
drove up to Maire’s in time, and I was just 
getting out of the victoria when a little soldier 
passed, and our eyes met. My heart stood still; 
he had great dark eyes and an exquisite olive- 
dark face—a Florentine bronze, Frank, by a 
great master. He looked like Napoleon when he 


OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 459 


was first Consul, only—less imperious, more 
Beautiul... . 

“I got out hypnotised, and followed him down 
the Boulevard. as in a dream; the cocher came 
running after me, I remember, and I gave him 
a five franc piece, and waved him off; I had no 
idea what I owed him; I did not want to hear 
his voice; it might break the spell; mutely I 
followed my fate. I overtook the boy in a short 
time and asked him to come and have a drink, 
and he said to me in his quaint French way: 

““Ce nest pas de refus!’? (Too good to re- 
fuse.) 

“We went into a café, and I ordered some- 
thing, I forget what, and we began to talk. 
I told him I liked his face; I had had a friend 
once like him; and I wanted to know all about 
him. I was in a hurry to meet you, but I had 
to make friends with him first. He began 
by telling me all about his mother, Frank, yes, 
his mother.” Oscar smiled here in spite of 
himself. 

“But at last I got from him that he was 
always free on Thursdays, and he would be 
very glad to see me then, though he did not 
know what I could see in him to like. I found 
out that the thing he desired most in the world 
was a bicycle; he talked of nickel-plated handle 
bars, and chains—and finally I told him it might 


460 OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 


be arranged. He was very grateful and so we — 
made a rendezvous for the next Bee and — 
I came on at once to dine with you.’ , 

“Goodness!” I cried laughing. “A soldier, a q 
nickel-plated bicycle and a great romantic pas- _ 
sion!” 4 

“Tf I had said a brooch, or a necklace, some ~ 


trinket which would have cost ten times as — 


much, you would have found it quite natural.” — 

“Yes,” I admitted, “but I don’t think Pd © 
have introduced the necklace the first evening if ~ 
there had been any romance in the affair, and — 
the nickel-plated bicycle to me seems irresis- — 
tibly comic.”’ 4 

“Frank,” he cried reprovingly, “I cannot — q 
talk to you if you laugh; I am quite serious. — 
I don’t believe you know what a great romantic 
passion is; I am going to Cony wee you Bo you 
oaminowoehe meaning of it.’ E 

“Fire away,” I replied, “I am here to be © 


convinced. But I don’t think you will teach ~ 


me that there is any romance except where © 
there is another sex.” a 

“Don’t talk to me of the other sex,” he cried — 
with distaste in voice and manner. “First of all 
in beauty there is no comparison between a 3 
boy and a girl. Think of the enormous, fat hips — 
which every sculptor has to tone down, and — 
make lighter, and the great udder breasts which — 


OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 461 


the artist has to make small and round and firm, 
and then picture the exquisite slim lines of a 
boy’s figure. No one who loves beauty can 
hesitate for a moment. The Greeks Knew that; 
they had the sense of plastic beauty, and they 
understood that there is no comparison.” 

“You must not say that,’ I replied; “‘you are 
going too far; the Venus of Milo is as fine as any 
Apollo, in sheer beauty; the flowing curves ap- 
peal to me more than your weedy lines.” 

‘Perhaps they do, Frank,” he retorted, “but 
you must see that the boy is far more beautiful. 
It is your sex-instinct, your sinful sex-instinct 
which prevents you worshipping the higher 
form of beauty. Height and length of limb give 
distinction; slightness gives grace; women are 
squat! You must admit that the boy’s figure 
is more beautiful; the appeal it makes far 
higher, more spiritual.” 

‘¢Six of one and half-a-dozen of the other,” I 
barked. “Your sculptor knows it is just as hard 
to find an ideal boy’s figure as an ideal girl’s; and 
if he has to modify the most perfect girl’s figure, 
he has to modify the most perfect boy’s figure as 
well. If he refines the girl’s breasts and hips 
he has to pad the boy’s ribs and tone down 
the great staring knee-bones and the unlovely 
large ankles; but please go on, I enjoy your 
special pleading and your romantic passion in- 


462 OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 


terests me; though you have not yet come 
to the romance, let alone the passion.” 

“Oh, Frank,” he cried, “‘the story is full of ro- 
mance; every meeting was an event in my life. 
You have no idea how intelligent he is; every even- 
ing we spent together he was different; he had 
grown, developed. I lent him books and he read 
them, and his mind opened from week to week 
like a flower, till in a short time, a few months, 
he became an exquisite companion and disciple. 
Frank, no girl grows like that; they have no 
minds, and what intelligence they have is all 
given to wretched vanities, and personal jeal- 
ousies. ‘There is no intellectual companionship 
possible with them. ‘They want to talk of dress, 
and not of ideas, and how persons look and not 
of what they are. How can you have the 
flower of romance without a brotherhood of 
soul?”’ 

“Sisterhood of soul seems to me infinitely 
finer,” I said, “but go on.” 

“T shall convince you,” he declared; “‘I must 
be able to, because all reason is on my side. 
Let me give you one instance. Of course my 
boy had his bicycle; he used to come to me on 
it and go to and fro ftom the barracks on it. 
When you came to Paris in September, you in- 
vited me to dine one night, one Thursday night, 
when he was to come to me. I told him I had 


OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 463 


to go and dine with you. He didn’t mind; but 
was glad when I said I had an English editor 
for a friend, glad that I should have someone to 
talk to about London and the people I used to 
know. If it had been a woman [I loved, I 
should have been forced to tell lies: she would 
have been jealous of my past. I told him the 
truth, and when I spoke about you he grew 
interested and excited, and at last he put a wish 
before me. He wanted to know if he might 
come and leave his bicycle outside and look 
through the window of the restaurant, just to 
see us at dinner. I told him there might possibly 
be women-guests. He replied that he would 
be delighted to see me in dress-clothes talking 
to gentlemen and ladies. 

“Might he come?” he persisted. 

“Of course I said he could come, and he came, 
but I never saw him. 

‘The next time we met he told me all about 
it; how he had picked you out from my de- 
scription of you, and how he knew Baier from 
his likeness to Dumas pére, and he was delight- 
ful about it all. 

“Now, Frank, would any girl have come to 
see you enjoying yourself with other people? 
Would any girl have stared through the window 
and been glad to see you inside amusing your- 
self with other men and women? You know 


464. OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 


there’s not a girl on earth with such unselfish 
devotion. ‘There is no comparison, I tell you, 
between the boy and the girl; I say again delib- 
erately, you don’t know what a great romantic 
passion is or the high unselfishness of true love.” 

“You have put it with extraordinary ability,” 
I said, ‘‘as of course I knew you would. I think 
I can understand the charm of such companion- 
ship; but only from the young boy’s point of 
view, not from yours. I can understand how 
you have opened to him a new heaven and a 
new earth, but what has he given you? Nothing. 
On the other hand any finely gifted girl would 
have given you something. If you had really 
touched her heart, you would have found in her 
some instinctive tenderness, some proof of un- 


selfish, exquisite devotion that would have made > 


your eyes prickle with a sense of inferiority. 
“After all, the essence of love, the finest spirit 
of that companionship you speak about, of the 
sisterhood of soul, is that the other person 
should quicken you, too; open to you new hori- 
zons, discover new possibilities; and how could 
your soldier boy help you in any way? He 
brought you no new ideas, no new feelings, could 
reveal no new thoughts to you. I can see no 
romance, no growth of soul in such a connection. 
But the girl is different from the man in all ways. 
You have as much to learn from her as she has 


i of —<—-. e —— 


OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 465 


from you, and neither of you can come to ideal 
growth in any other way: you are both half- 
parts of humanity—complements, and in need 
of each other.” 

“You have put it very cunningly, Frank, as 
I expected you would, to return your compli- 
ment, but you must admit that with the boy, 
at any rate, you have no jealousy, no mean 
envyings, no silly inanities, There it 1s, Frank, 
some of us hate ‘cats.’ I can give reasons for 
my dislike, which to me are conclusive.” 

‘The boy who would beg for a bicycle is not 
likely to be without mean envyings,”’ I replied. 
“Now you have talked about romance and com- 
panionship,” I went on, “‘but can you really 
feel passion?”’ 

“Frank, what a silly question! Do you re- 
member how Socrates says he felt when the 
chlamys blew aside and showed him the limbs 
of Charmides? Don’t you remember how the 
blood throbbed in his veins and how he grew 
blind with desire, a scene more magical than the 
passionate love-lines of Sappho? 

“There is no other passion to be compared 
with it. A woman’s passion is degrading. She 
is continually tempting you. She wants your 
desire as a satisfaction for her vanity more than 
anything else, and her vanity is insatiable if 
her desire is weak, and so she continually 


466 OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 


tempts you to excess, and then blames you for 
the physical satiety and disgust which she her- 
self has created. With a boy there is no vanity 
in the matter, no jealousy, and therefore 
none of the tempting, not a tenth part of the 
coarseness; and consequently desire is always 
fresh and keen. Oh, Frank, believe me, you 
don’t know what a great romantic passion is.” 
““What you say only shows how little you 
know women,” I replied. “If you explained 
all this to the girl who loves you, she would see 
it at once, and her tenderness would grow with 
her self-abnegation; we all grow by giving. If 
the woman cares more than the man for caresses 
and kindness, it is because she feels more ten- 
derness, and is capable of intenser devotion.” 
“You don’t know what you are talking 
about, Frank,” he retorted. ‘“‘You repeat the 
old accepted commonplaces. The boy came 
to the station with me to-night. He knew I was 
going away for six months. His heart was like 
lead, tears gathered in his eyes again and 
again in spite of himself, and yet he tried to be 
gay and bright for my sake; he wanted to 
show me how glad he was that I should be happy, 
how thankful he was for all I had done for him, 
and the new mental life I had created in him. 
He did his best to keep my courage up. I 
cried, but he shook his tears away. ‘Six 


OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 467 


months will soon be over,’ he said, ‘and per- 
haps you will come back to me, and I shall be 
glad again.’ Meantime he will write charming 
letters to me, I’m sure. 

“Would any girl take a parting like that? 
No; she would be jealous and envious, and 
wonder why you were enjoying yourself in the 
South while she was condemned to live in the 
rainy, cold North. Would she ask you to tell 
her of all the beautiful girls you met, and 
whether they were charming and bright, as the 
boy asked me to tell him of all the interesting 
people I should meet, so that he, too, might 
take an interest in them? A girl in his place 
would have been ill with envy and malice and 
jealousy. Again I repeat, you don’t know what 
a high romantic passion is.” 

fexour arpument is illogical,”’ I cried, “if 
the girl is jealous, it is because she has given 
herself more completely: her exclusiveness is 
the other side of her devotion and tenderness; 
she wants to do everything for you, to be with 
you and help you in every way, and in case of 
illness or poverty or danger, you would find 
how much more she had to give than your red- 
breeched soldier.” 

‘““That’s merely a rude gibe and not an argu- 
ment, Frank.” 

“*As good an argument as your ‘cats,’” I 


468 OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 


replied; “your little soldier boy with his 
nickel-plated bicycle only makes me grin,” 
and I grinned. 

“You are unpardonable,” he cried, “un- 
pardonable, and in your soul you know that 
all the weight of argument is on my side. In 
your soul you must know it. What is the food 
of passion, Frank, but beauty, beauty alone, 
beauty always, and in beauty of form and 
vigour of life there is no comparison. If you 
loved beauty as intensely as I do, you would 
feel as I feel. It is beauty which gives me joy, 
makes me drunk as with wine, blind with 
insatiable desire. . &3 


CHAPTER XXIII 


Tiz was an incomparable companion, perfectly 
amiable, yet vivid, and eager as a child, always 
interested and interesting. We awoke at Avi- 
gnon and went out in pyjamas and overcoats to 
stretch our legs and get a bowl of coffee on the 
platform in the pearly grey light of early morn- 
ing. After coffee and cigarettes he led the way 
to the other end of the platform, that we might 
catch a glimpse of the town wall which, though 
terribly restored, yet, when seen from a distance, 
transports one back five hundred years to the 

age of chivalry. 

— “Ffow I should have loved to be a troubadour, 
or a trouvere, Frank; that was my true métter, 
to travel from castle to castle singing love songs 
and telling romantic stories to while away the 
_ tedium of the lives of the great. Fancy the re- 
ception they would have given me for bringing 
a new joy into their castled isolation, new ideas, 
new passions—a breath of gossip and scandal 
from the outside world to relieve the intolerable 
boredom of the middle ages. I should have 
been kept at the Court of Aix: I think they 
would have bound me with flower-chains, and 
409 


470 OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 


my fame would have spread all through the 
sunny vineyards and grey olive-clad hills of 
Provence.” 

When we got into the train again he began: 

““We stop next at Marseilles, don’t we, Frank? 
A great historic town for nearly three thousand 
years. One really feels a barbarian in com- 
parison, and yet all I know of Marseilles is 
that it is famous for bouzllabaisse. Suppose we 
stop and get some?” 

* Boutllabatsse,”’ I replied, “‘is not peculiar to 
Marseilles or the Rue Cannebiére. You can get it 
all along this coast. ‘There is only one thing 
necessary to it and that is rascasse, a fish caught 
only among the rocks: you will get excellent 
boutllabaisse at lunch where we are going.” 

“Where are we going? You have not told 
me yet.” 

“‘It is for you to decide,” I answered. “If 
you want perfect quiet there are two places in 
the Esterel mountains, Agay and La Napoule. 
Agay is in the middle of the Esterel. You would 
be absolutely alone there except for the visit 
of an occasional French painter. La Napoule 
is eight or ten miles from Cannes, so that you 
are within reach of a town and its amusements. 
There is still another place I had thought of, 
quieter than either, in the mountains behind 


Nice.” 


OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 471 


‘Nice sounds wonderful, Frank, but I should 
meet too many English people there who would 
know me, and they are horribly rude. I think 
we will choose La Napoule.”’ 

About ten o’clock we got out at La Napoule 
and installed ourselves in the little hotel, taking 
up three of the best rooms on the second or top 
floor, much to the delight of the landlord. At 
twelve we had breakfast under a big umbrella 
in the open air, looking over the sea. I had put 
the landlord on his mettle, and he gave us a 
fry of little red mullet, which made us under- 
stand how tasteless whitebait are: then a plain 
beefsteak aux pommes, a morsel of cheese, and 
a sweet omelette. We both agreed that we had 
had a most excellent breakfast. ‘The coffee 
left a good deal to be desired, and there was no 
champagne on the list fit to drink; but both 
these faults could be remedied by the morrow, 
and were remedied. 

We ‘pent the rest of the day wandering be- 
tween the seashore and the pine-clad hills. 
The next morning I put in some work, but in the 
afternoon I was free to walk and explore. On 
one of my first tramps I discovered a monastery 
among the hills hundreds of feet above the sea, 
built and governed by an Italian monk. I got 
to know the Pére Vergile! and had a great talk 


1 He lived till November, 1910. 


472 OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 


with him. He was both wise and strong, with 
ingratiating, gentle manners. Had he gone as ~ 
a boy from his little Italian fishing village to 
New York or Paris, he would have certainly 
come to greatness and honour. One afternoon I 
took Oscar to see him: the monastery was not ~ 
more than three-quarters of an hour’s stroll 
from our hotel; but Oscar grumbled at the walk 
as a nuisance, said it was miles and miles; the: 
road, too, was rough, and the sun hot. The ~— 
truth was, he was abnormally lazy. Buthefasci- 
nated the Italian with his courteous manner and 
vivid speech, and as soon as we were alone the 
Abbé asked me who he was. 

‘“‘He must be a great man,” he said, “‘he has 
the stamp of a great man, and he must have 
lived in courts: he has the charming, graceful, 
smiling courtesy of the great.” 

‘“'Yes,”’ I nodded mysteriously, “a great man 
—incognito.” ! 

The Abbé kept us to dinner, made us taste 
of his oldest wines, and a special liqueur of his 
own distilling; told us how he had built the 
monastery with no money, and when we ex- 
claimed with wonder, reproved us gently: 

‘All great things are built with faith, and 
not with money; why wonder that this little 
building stands firmly on that everlasting foun- 
dation?” 


OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 473. 


When we came out of the monastery it was 
already night, and the moonlight was throwing 
fantastic leafy shadows on the path, as we 
walked down through the avenue of forest to 
the sea shore. 

“You remember those words of Vergil, Frank 
—per amica silentia lune—they always seem 
to me indescribably beautiful; the most magic 
line about the moon ever written, except 
Browning’s in the poem in which he mentioned 
Keats—‘him even.’ I love that ‘amica silentia.’ 
What a beautiful nature the man had who could 
feel ‘the friendly silences of the moon.’ ” 

When we got down the hill he declared him- 
self tired. 

© Vired alter a'mile?”’ I asked. 

“Tired to death, worn out,” he said, laughing 
at his own laziness. 

“Shall we get a boat and row across the 
bay?” 

‘How splendid! of course, let’s do it,”? and we 
went down to the landing stage. I had never 
seen the water so calm; half the bay was veiled 
by the mountain, and opaque like unpolished 
steel; a little further out, the water was a purple 
shield, emblazoned with shimmering silver. We 
called a fisherman and explained what we 
wanted. When we got into the boat, to my 
astonishment, Oscar began calling the fisher boy 


474 OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 


by his name; evidently he knew him quite well. 
When we landed I went up from the boat to the 
hotel, leaving Oscar and the boy together. .. . 

A fortnight taught me a good deal about 
Oscar at this time; he was intensely indolent: 
quite content to kill time by the hour talking 
to the fisher lads, or he would take a little 
carriage and drive to Cannes and amuse him- 
self at some wayside cafe. 

He never cared to walk and I walked for 
miles daily, so that we spent only one or at most 
two afternoons a week together, meeting so 
seldom that nearly all our talks were significant. 
Several times contemporary names came up and 
I was compelled to notice for the first time that 
really he was contemptuous of almost every- 
one, and had a sharp word to say about many 
who were supposed to be his friends. One day 
we spoke of Ricketts and Shannon; I was say- 
ing that had Ricketts lived in Paris he would 
have had a great reputation: many of his 
designs I thought extraordinary, and his intel- 
lect was peculiarly French—mordant even. Os- 
car did not like to hear praise of anyone. 

“Do you know my word for them, Frank? 
I like it. I call them ‘Temper and Tempera- 
Menta: 

Was his punishment making him a little spite- 
ful or was it the temptation of the witty phrase? 


OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 475 


“What do you think of Arthur Symons?’ I 
asked. 

“Oh, Frank, I said of him long ago that he 
was a sad example of an Egoist who had no 
Ego.” | 

“And what of your compatriot, George 
Moore? He’s popular enough,” I continued. 

“Popular, Frank, as if that counted. George 
Moore has conducted his whole education in 
public. He had written two or three books 
before he found out there was such a thing as 
English grammar. He at once announced his 
discovery and so won the admiration of the 
illiterate. A few years later he discovered that 
there was something architectural in style, that 
sentences had to be built up into a paragraph, 
and paragraphs into chapters and so on. Nat- 
urally he cried this revelation, too, from the 
housetops, and thus won the admiration of 
the journalists who had been making rubble- 
heaps all their lives without knowing it. I’m 
much afraid, Frank, in spite of all his efforts, 
he will die before he reaches the level from 
which writers start. It’s a pity because he has 
certainly a little real talent. He differs from 
Symons in that he has an Ego, but his Ego 
has five senses and no soul.” 

“What about Bernard Shaw?” I probed fur- 


ther, ‘‘after all he’s going to count.” 


476 OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 


“Yes, Frank, a man of real ability but with 
a bleak mind. Humorous gleams as of wintry 
sunlight on a bare, harsh landscape. He has 
no passion, no feeling, and without passionate 
feeling how can one be an artist? He believes in 
nothing, loves nothing, not even Bernard Shaw, 
and really, on the whole, I don’t wonder at his 
indifference,” and he laughed mischievously. 

“And Wells?” J asked. 

“‘A scientific Jules Verne,” he replied with a 
shrug. 

“Did you ever care for Hardy?” I continued. 

“Not greatly. He has just found out that 
women have legs underneath their dresses, and 
this discovery has almost wrecked his life. He 
writes poetry, I believe, in his leisure moments, 
and I am afraid it will be very hard reading. He © 
knows nothing of love; passion to him is a child- 
ish illness like measles—poor unhappy spirit!” 

“You might be describing Mrs. Humphry 
Ward,”’ I cried. 

“God forbid, Frank,’’ he exclaimed with such 
mock horror I had to laugh. ‘After all, Hardy 
is a writer and a great landscape painter.” 

“T don’t know why it is,” he went on, “but 
I am always match-making when I think of 
English celebrities. I should so much like to 
have introduced Mrs. Humphry Ward blush- 
ing at eighteen or twenty to Swinburne, who 


OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 477 


~ would of course have bitten her neck in a furious 
kiss, and she would have run away and exposed 
him in court, or else have suffered agonies of 
mingled delight and shame in silence. 

“And if one could only marry Thomas Hardy 
to Victoria Cross he might have gained some 
inkling of real passion with which to animate his 
little keepsake pictures of starched ladies. A 
great many writers, I think, might be saved in 
this way, but there would still be left the Corellis 
and Hall Caines that one could do nothing with 
except bind them back to back, which would not 
even tantalise them, and throw them into the 
river, a new noyade: the Thames at Barking, I 
think, would be about the place for them..... 

“Where do you go every afternoon?” I asked 
him once casually. 

“4 go to Cannes, Frank, and sit in a café and 

look across the sea to Capri, where Tiberius 
used to sit like a spider watching, and I think 
of myself as an exile, the victim of one of his in- 
scrutable suspicions, or else I am in Rome look- 
ing at the people dancing naked, but with gilded 
lips, through the streets at the Floralia. I sup 
with the arbiter elegantiarum and come back to La 
Napoule, Frank,” and he pulled his jowl, “to the 
simple life and the charm of restful friendship.” 

More and more clearly I saw that the effort, 
the hard work, of writing was altogether beyond 


4'78 OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 


him: he was now one of those men of genius, 
talkers merely, half artists, half dreamers, whom 
Balzac describes contemptuously as wasting 
their lives, “talking to hear themselves talk”; 
capable indeed of fine conceptions and of occa- 
sional fine phrases, but incapable of the punish- 
ing toil of execution; charming companions, fated 
in the long run to fall to misery and destitution. 

Constant creation is the first condition of art 
as it is the first condition of life. 

I asked him one day if he remembered the 
terrible passage about those “‘eunuchs of art” 
in “Ta Cousine Bette.” | 

“Yes, Frank,” he replied; “but Balzac was 
probably envious of the artist-talker; at any 
rate, we who talk should not be condemned by 


those to whom we dedicate our talents. It is © 


for posterity to blame us; but after all I have 
written a good deal. Do you remember how 
Browning’s Sarto defends himself? 
‘Some good son 
Paint my two hundred pictures—let him try.” 

He did not see that Balzac, one of the greatest 
talkers that ever lived according to Théophile 
Gautier, was condemning the temptation to 
which he himself had no doubt yielded too often. 
To my surprise, Oscar did not even read much 
now. He was not eager to hear new thoughts, a 
little rebellious to any new mental influence. 


k 


aoe ee! 


OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 479 


He had reached his zenith, I suppose: had be- 
gun to fossilise, as men do when they cease to 
grow. 

One day at lunch I questioned him: 

“You told me once that you always imagined 
yourself in the place of every historic personage. 
Suppose you had been Jesus, what religion would 
you have preached?” 

“What a wonderful question!” he cried. 
“What religion is mine? What belief have I? 

“I believe most of all in personal liberty for 
every human soul. Each man ought to do what 
he likes, to develop as he will. England, or 
rather London, for I know little of England 
outside London, was an ideal place to me, till 
they punished me because I did not share their 
tastes. What an absurdity it all was, Frank: 
~ how dared they punish me for what is good in 
my eyes? How dared they?” and he fell into 
moody thought. . . . . The idea of a new 
gospel did not really interest him. 

It was about this time he first told me of a 
new play he had in mind. 

mileenas @ great scene, Frank,” he. said. 
“Imagine a roué of forty-five who is married; 
incorrigible, of course, Frank, a great noble 
who gets the person he is in love with to come 
and stay with him in the country. One evening 

his wife, who has gone upstairs to lie down 


480 . OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 


with a headache, is behind a screen in a room 


eo ee ey 


=e 


half asleep; she is awakened by her husband’s © 


courting. She cannot move, she is bound 
breathless to her couch; she hears everything. 
Then, Frank, the husband comes to the door 


and finds it locked, and knowing that his wife 


is inside with the host, beats upon the door 
and will have entrance, and while the guilty 
ones whisper together—the woman blaming the 
man, the man trying to think of some excuse, 
some way out of the net—the wife gets up very 
quietly and turns on the lights while the two 
cowards stare at her with wild surmise. She 


passes to the door and opens it and the husband 


rushes in to find his hostess as well as the host 
and his wife. I think it is a great scene, Frank, 
a great stage picture.” 

“It is,” I said, “a great scene; why don@ 
you write it?” 

“Perhaps I shall, Frank, one of these days, 
but now I am thinking of some poetry, a ‘ Ballad 
of a Fisher Boy,’ a sort of companion to ‘The 
Ballad of Reading Gaol,’ in which I sing of 
liberty instead of prison, joy instead of sorrow, 
a kiss instead of an execution. I shall do this 
joy-song much better than I did the song of 
sorrow and despair.” 

‘Like Davidson’s ‘Ballad of a Nun,’ ”’ I said, 
for the sake of saying something. 


\ 
a a oe 
A 


eo re ——= 


OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 481 


“Naturally Davidson would write the ‘ Ballad 
of a Nun,’ Frank; his talent is Scotch and severe; 
but I should like to write ‘The Ballad of a 
Fisher Boy,’’’ and he fell to dreaming. 

The thought of his punishment was often 
with him. It seemed to him hideously wrong 
and unjust. But he never questioned the right 
of society to punish. He did not see that, if 
you once grant that, the wrong done to him 
could be defended. 

“I used to think myself a lord of life,” he 
said. “How dared those little wretches con- 
demn me and punish me? Everyone of them 
tainted with a sensuality which I loathe.” 

To call him out of this bitter way of regret 
I quoted Shakespeare’s sonnet: 

“For why should others’ false adulterate eyes 

Give salutation to my sportive blood? 

Or on my frailties why are frailer spies, 

Which in their wills count bad what I think good?” 
**His complaint is exactly yours, Oscar.” 
It’s astonishing, Frank, how well you know 
him, and yet you deny his intimacy with Pem- 
broke. -To you he is a living man; you always 
talk of him as if he had just gone out of the 
room, and yet you persist in believing in his 
innocence.” 

““You misapprehend me,” I said, “‘the pas- 

sion of his life was for Mary Fitton, to give 


482 OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 


her a name; I mean the ‘dark lady’ of the 
sonnets, who was Beatrice, Cressida and Cleo- — 
patra, and you yourself admit that a man who 
has a mad passion for a woman is immune, I 
think the doctors call it, to other influences.”’ 

“Oh, yes, Frank, of course; but how could 
Shakespeare with his beautiful nature love a 
woman to that mad excess?” 

“Shakespeare hadn’t your overwhelming love 
of plastic beauty,” I replied; “‘he fell in love with 
a dominant personality, the sopesielleiiiont of his 
own yielding, amiable disposition.” 

“That’s it,” he broke in, “our opposites attract — 
us irresistibly—the charm of the unknown!” 

“You often talk now,” I went on, “as if you 
had never loved a woman; yet you must have — 
loved—more than one.”’ 

“My salad days, Frank,” he quoted, smiling, 
“‘when I was green in judgment, cold of blood.” 

*““No, no,” I persisted, “it is not a great while 
since you praised Lady So and So and the 
Terrys enthusiastically.” 

“Uady »’ he began gravely (and I could 
not but notice that the mere title seduced him 
to conventional, poetic language), “moves like 
a lily in water; I always think of her as a lily; 
just as I used to think of Lily Langtry as a tulip, 
with a figure like a Greek vase carved in ivory. 
But I always adored the Terrys: Marion is a 


OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 483 


great actress with subtle charm and enigmatic 
fascination: she was my ‘Woman of no impor- 
tance,’ artificial and enthralling; she belongs to 
my theatre——” 

As he seemed to have lost the thread, I ques- 
tioned again. 
mend Ellen?” 
 ©QOh, Ellen’s a perfect wonder,” he broke out, 
“a great character. Do you know her history?” 
And then, without waiting for an answer, he 
continued: 

“She began as a model for Watts, the painter, 
when she was only some fifteen or sixteen years 
of age. In a week she read him as easily as if 
he had been a printed book. He treated her 
with condescending courtesy, en grand seigneur, 

and, naturally, she had her revenge on him. 
“One day her mother came in and asked 
Watts what he was going to do about Ellen. 
Watts said he didn’t understand. ‘You have 
made Ellen in love with you,’ said the mother, 
‘and it is impossible that could have happened 
unless you had been attentive to her.’ 

“Poor Watts protested and protested, but the 
mother broke down and sobbed, and said the 
girl’s heart would be broken, and at length, in 
despair, Watts asked what he was to do, and 
the mother could only suggest marriage. 

‘Finally they were married.” 


484. OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 


“You don’t mean that,” I cried, “I never 
knew that Watts had married Ellen Terry.” 

“Oh, yes,” said Oscar, “they were married all © 
right. The mother saw to that, and to do him ~ 
justice, Watts kept the whole family like a gen- 
tleman. But like an idealist, or, as a man of © 
the world would say, a fool, he was ashamed of 
his wife; he showed great reserve to her, and 
when he gave his usual dinners or receptions, he 
invited only men and so, carefully, left her out. ~ 

“One evening he had a dinner; a great many _ 
well-known people were present and a bishop ~ 
was on his right hand, when, suddenly, between — 
the cheese and the pear, as the French would — 
say, Ellen came dancing into the room in pink — 
tights with a basket of roses around her waist — 
with which she began pelting the guests. Watts — 
was horrified, but everyone else delighted, the — 


bishop in especial, it is said, declared he had 


never seen anything so romantically beautiful. 
Watts nearly had a fit, but Ellen danced out of 
the room with all their hearts in her basket in- 
stead of her roses. 

‘To me that’s the true story of Ellen Terry’s 
life. It may be true or false in reality, but I be- 
lieve it to be true in fact as in symbol; it is not 
only an image of her life, but of her art. No one 
knows how she met Irving or learned to act, — 
though, as you know, she was one of the best — 


OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 485 


actresses that ever graced the English stage. A 
great personality. Her children even have in- 
herited some of her talent.” 

It was only famous actresses such as Ellen 
‘Terry and Sarah Bernhardt and great ladies that 
Oscar ever praised. He was a snob by nature; in- 
deed this was the chief link between him and Eng- 
lish society. Besides, he had a rooted contempt 
for women and especially for their brains. He said 
once, of some one: “he is like a woman, sure to 
remember the trivial and forget the important.” 

It was this disdain of the sex which led him, 
later, to take up our whole dispute again. 

*“[ have been thinking over our argument in 
the train,” he began; “‘really it was preposterous 
of me to let you off with a drawn battle; you 
should have been beaten and forced to haul 
- down your flag. We talked of love and | let 
you place the girl against the boy: it is all 
nonsense. A girl is not made for love; she is 
not even a good instrument of love.”’ 

‘Some of us care more for the person than the 
pleasure,” I replied, ‘“‘and others—. You re- 
member Browning: 

Nearer we hold of God 

Who gives, than of His tribes that take, I must believe.” 

** Yes, yes,’ he replied impatiently, “but that’s 
not the point. J mean that a woman is not made 
for passion and love; but to be a mother. 


486 OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 


“When I married, my wife was a beautiful 
girl, white and slim as a lily, with dancing 
eyes and gay rippling laughter like music. Ina 
year or so the flower-like grace had all vanished; 
she became heavy, shapeless, deformed: she 
dragged herself about the house in uncouth 
misery with drawn blotched face and hideous 
body, sick at heart because of our love. It was 
dreadful. I tried to be kind to her; forced my- 
self to touch and kiss her; but she was sick 
always, and—oh! I cannot recall it, it is all 
loathsome. . . . I used to wash my mouth 
and open the window to cleanse my lips in the 
pure air. Oh, nature is disgusting; it takes 
beauty and defiles it: it defaces the ivory-white 
body we have adored, with the vile cicatrices 
of maternity: it befouls the altar of the soul. 

“How can you talk of such intimacy as love? 
How can you idealise it? Love is not possible 
to the artist unless it is sterile.” 7 

“All her suffering did not endear her to you?” 
I asked in amazement; “‘did not call forth that 
pity in you which you used to speak of as di- 
vine?”’ 

“Pity, Frank,” he exclaimed impatiently; 
“pity has nothing to do with love. How can one 
desire what is shapeless, deformed, ugly? De- 
sire is killed by maternity; passion buried in 
conception,” and he flung away from the table. 


OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 487 


At length I understood his dominant motive: 
trahit sua quemque voluptas, his Greek love of 
form, his intolerant cult of physical beauty, 
could take no heed of the happiness or well- 
being of the beloved. 

*T will not talk to you about it, Frank; I am 
like a Persian, who lives by warmth and wor- 
ships the sun, talking to some Esquimau, who 
answers me with praise of blubber and nights 
spent in ice houses and baths of foul vapour. 
Let’s talk of something else.” 


CHAPTER XXIV 


A uITTLeE later I was called to Monte Carlo 
and went for a few days, leaving Oscar, as he 
said, perfectly happy, with good food, excellent 
champagne, absinthe and coffee, and his simple 
fisher friends. 

When I came back to La Napoule, I found 
everything altered and altered for the worse. 
There was an Englishman of a good class named 
M staying at the hotel. He was accom- 
panied by a youth of seventeen or eighteen 
whom he called his servant. Oscar wanted to 
know if I minded meeting him. 

“Te is charming, Frank, and well read, and 


he admires me very much: you won’t mind 


his dining with us, will you?” 

‘““Of course not,” I replied. But when I saw 
M I thought him an insignificant, foolish 
creature, who put to show a great admiration 
for Oscar, and drank in his words with parted 
lips; and well he might, for he had hardly any 
brains of his own. He had, however, a certain 
liking for the poetry and literature of passion.1 

To my astonishment Oscar was charming to 


1Cfr. Appendix: ‘‘Criticisms by Robert Ross.” 
488 


OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 489 


him, chiefly I think because he was well off, 
and was pressing Oscar to spend the summer 
with him at some place he had in Switzerland. 
This support made Oscar recalcitrant to any 
influence I might have had over him. When I 
asked him if he had written anything whilst 
I was away, he replied casually: 

*“No, Frank, I don’t think I shall be able to 
write any more. What is the good of it? I 
cannot force myself to write.” 

“And your ‘Ballad of a Fisher Boy’?” I 
asked. 

““T have composed three or four verses of it,” 
he said, smiling at me, “I have got them in my 
head,” and he recited two or three, one of which 
Was quite good, but none of them startling. 

Not having seen him for some days, I noticed 
that he was growing stout again: the good living 
and constant drinking seemed to ooze out of 
him; he began to look as he looked in the old 
days in London just before the catastrophe. 

One morning I asked him to put the verses 
on paper which he had recited to me, but he 
would not; and when I pressed him, cried: 

“Let me live, Frank; tasks remind me of 
prison. You do not know how I abhor even 
the memory of it: it was degrading, inhuman!”’ 

“Prison was the making of you,” I could 
not help retorting, irritated by what seemed to 


490 OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 


me a mere excuse. ‘‘ You came out of it better 
in health and stronger than I have ever known 
you. The hard living, regular hours and com- 
pulsory chastity did you all the good in the 
world. ‘That is why you wrote those superb let- 
ters to the ‘Daily Chronicle,’ and the ‘Ballad of 
Reading Gaol’; the State ought really to put 
you in prison and keep you there.” 

For the first time in my life I saw angry 
dislike in his eyes. | 

“You talk poisonous nonsense, Frank,” he 
retorted. “Bad food is bad for everyone, and 
abstinence from tobacco is mere torture to me. 
Chastity is just as unnatural and devilish as 
hunger; I hate both. Self-denial is the shining 
sore on the leprous body of Christianity.” 

oval this? M4 giggled applause, which 
naturally excited the combative instincts in me 
—always too alert. 

‘All great. artists,” I replied, “have nad te 
practise chastity; it is chastity alone which 
gives vigour and tone to mind and body, while 
building up a reserve of extraordinary strength. 
Your favourite Greeks never allowed an athlete 
to go into the palestra unless he had previously 
lived a life of complete chastity for a whole 
year. Balzac, too, practised it and extolled its 
virtues, and goodness knows he loved all the 
mud-honey of Paris,” 


OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 491 


“You are hopelessly wrong, Frank, what 
madness will you preach next! You are always 
bothering one to write, and now forsooth you 
recommend chastity and ‘skilly,’ though I 
admit,’ he added laughing, “that your ‘skilly’ 
includes all the indelicacies of the season, with 
champagne, Mocha coffee, and absinthe to boot. 
But surely you are getting too puritanical. It’s 
absurd of you; the other day you defended 
conventional love against my ideal passion.” 

He provoked me: his tone was that of rather 
contemptuous superiority. I kept silent: I did 
not wish to retort as I might have done. if 
M had not been present. 

But Oscar was determined to assert his 
peculiar view. One or two days afterwards he 
came in very red and excited and more angry 
than I had ever seen him. 

“What do you think has happened, Frank?” 

“TIT do not know. Nothing serious, I hope.” 

‘| was sitting by the roadside on the way to 
Cannes. I had taken out a Vergil with me and 
had begun reading it. As I sat there reading, 
I happened to raise my eyes, and who should 
I see but George Alexander—George Alexander 
on a bicycle. I had known him intimately in 
the old days, and naturally I got up delighted 
to see him, and went towards him. But he 
turned his head aside and pedalled past me delib- 


A492 OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 


erately. He meant to cut me... Of course I know 


that just before my trial in London he took 
my name off the bill of my comedy, though he 
went on playing it. But I was not angry with 
him for that, though he might have behaved 
as well as Wyndham,’ who owed me nothing, 
don’t you think? 

“Here there was nobody to see him, yet he 
cut me. What brutes men are! They not only 
punish me as a society, but now they are trying 
as individuals to punish me, and after all I have 
not done worse than they do. What difference 
is there between one form of sexual indulgence 
and another? I hate hypocrisy and hypocrites! 
Think of Alexander, who made all his money 
out of my works, cutting me, Alexander! It is 
too ignoble. Wouldn’t you be angry, Frank?” 

“IT daresay I should be,” I replied coolly, 
hoping the incident would be a spur to him. 

“T’ve always wondered why you gave Alex- 
ander a play? Surely you didn’t think him an 
actors.” 


1 The incident is worth recording for the honour of human nature. 
At the moment of Oscar’s trial Charles Wyndham had let his theatre, 
the Criterion, to Lewis Waller and H. H. Morell to produce in it ‘An 
Ideal Husband” which had been running for over too nights at the 
Haymarket. When Alexander took Oscar’s name off the bill, Wynd- 
ham wrote to the young Managers, saying that, if under the altered 
circumstances they wished to cancel their agreement, he would allow 
them todoso. But if they ‘put on” a play of Mr. Wilde’s, the author’s 
name must be on all the bills and placards as usual. He could not allow 
his theatre to be used to insult a man who was on his trial. 


> 

4 ’ 
ra 
fl 
4 
ue 


i ee 


Pane 


kn a on ody 


og 


nati a : ri , a 
DOPE a ae ee ee ae oe a 


ee ee ee eg ee te 


ro a 
Sf ge on Bo! 


a a a Nan, 


OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 493 


“No, no!” he exclaimed, a sudden smile 
lighting up his face; ‘‘ Alexander doesn’t act on 
the stage; he behaves. But wasn’t it mean of 
him?” 

I couldn’t help smiling, the dart was so de- 
served. 

* Begin another play,’ I said, “and the 
Alexanders will immediately go on their knees 
to you again. On the other hand, if you do 
nothing you may expect worse than discourtesy. 
Men love to condemn their neighbours’ pet vice. 
You ought to know the world by this time.” 

He did not even notice the hint to work, but 
broke out angrily: 

“What you call vice, Frank, is not vice: it is 
as good to me as it was to Cesar, Alexander, 
Michelangelo and Shakespeare. It was first of 
all made a sin by monasticism, and it has been 
made a crime in recent times, by the Goths—the 
Germans and English—who have done little 
or nothing since to refine or exalt the ideals of 
humanity. ‘They all damn the sins they have 
no mind to, and that’s their morality. A brutal 
race; they overeat and overdrink and condemn 
the lusts of the flesh, while revelling in all the 
_vilest sins of the spirit. If they would read 
the 23rd chapter of St. Matthew and apply it 
to themselves, they would learn more than by 
condemning a pleasure they don’t understand. 


494 OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 


Why, even Bentham refused to put what you 
call a ‘vice’ in his penal code, and you yourself 
admitted that it should not be punished as a 
crime; for it carries no temptation with it. It 
may be a malady; but, if so, it appears only to 
attack the highest natures. It is disgraceful to 
punish it. The wit of man can find no argument 
which justifies its punishment.” 

“Don’t be too sure of that,’ I retorted. 

“‘T have never heard a convincing argument 
which condemns it, Frank; I do not believe 
such a reason exists.” | 

“Don’t forget,” I said, “that this practice 
which you defend is condemned by a hundred 
generations of the most civilised races of man- 
kind.” 

‘Mere prejudice of the unlettered, Frank.” 

“And what is such a prejudice?” I asked. 
“It is the reason of a thousand generations of 
men, a reason so sanctified by secular experi- 
ence that it has passed into flesh and blood 
and become an emotion and is no longer merely 
an argument. I would rather have one such 
prejudice held by men of a dozen different races 
than a myriad reasons. Such a prejudice is in- 
carnate reason approved by immemorial experi- 
ence. 

“What argument have you against cannibal- 
ism; what reason is there why we should not 


OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 495 


fatten babies for the spit and eat their flesh? 
The flesh is sweeter, African travellers tell us, 
than any other meat, tenderer at once and more 
sustaining; all reasons are in favour of it. What 
hinders us from indulging in this appetite but 
prejudice, sacred prejudice, an instinctive loath- 
ing at the bare idea? 

“Humanity, it seems to me, is toiling up a 
long slope leading from the brute to the god: 
again and again whole generations, sometimes 
whole races, have fallen back and disappeared 
in the abyss. Every slip fills the survivors with 
fear and horror which with ages have become 
instinctive, and now you appear and laugh at 
their fears and tell them that human flesh is 
excellent food, and that sterile kisses are the 
noblest form of passion. They shudder from 
you and hate and punish you, and if you per- 
sist they will kill you. Who shall say they are 
wrong? Whoshall sneer at their instinctive repul- 
sion hallowed by ages of successful endeavour?”’ 

“Fine rhetoric, I concede,” he replied, “‘but 
mere rhetoric. I never heard such a defence 
of prejudice before. I should not have expected 
it from you. You admit you don’t share the 
prejudice; you don’t feel the horror, the in- 
stinctive loathing you describe. Why? Be- 
cause you are educated, Frank, because you 
know that the passion Socrates felt was not a 


496 OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 


low passion, because you know that Cesar’s 
weakness, let us say, or the weakness of Michel- 
angelo or of Shakespeare, is not despicable. If 


the desire is not a characteristic of the highest 


humanity, at least it is consistent. with it.’’} 


“T cannot admit that,” I answered. “First 


of all, let us leave Shakespeare out of the ques- 
tion, or I should have to ask you for proofs 
of his guilt, and there are none. About the 
others there is this to be said, it is not by imi- 
tating the vices and weaknesses of great men 
that we shall get to their level. And suppose 


we are fated to climb above them, then their — 


weaknesses are to be dreaded. 

“Tl have not even tried to put the strongest 
reasons before you; I should have thought your 
own mind would have supplied them; but 
surely you see that the historical argument is 
against you. This vice of yours is dropping 
out of life, like cannibalism: it is no longer a 
practice of the highest races. It may have 
seemed natural enough to the Greeks, to us 


itis unnatural. Even the best Athenians con-— 


demned it; Socrates took pride in never having 
yielded to it; all moderns denounce it disdain- 
fully. You must see that the whole progress of 
the world, the current of educated opinion, is 
against you, that you are now a ‘sport,’ a pecul- 


1Cfr. end of Appendix:—A Last Word, 


‘2 § PP ek... 


OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 497 


larity, an abnormality, a man with six fingers: 
not a ‘sport’ that is, full of promise for the future, 
but a ‘sport’ of the dim backward and abysm 
of time, an arrested development.” 

“You are bitter, Frank, almost rude.” 

“Forgive me, Oscar, forgive me, please; it is 
because I want you at long last to open your 
eyes, and see things as they are.” 

“But I thought you were with us, Frank, 
I thought at least you condemned the punish- 
ment, did not believe in the barbarous penalties.” 

‘I disbelieve in all punishment,” I said; “it 
is by love and not by hate that men must be 
redeemed. I believe, too, that the time is al- 
ready come when the better law might be put in 
force, and above all, I condemn punishment 
which strikes a man, an artist like you, who 
has done beautiful and charming things as if 
he had done nothing. At least the good you 
have accomplished should be set against the 
evil. It has always seemed monstrous to me 
that you should have been punished like a 
Taylor. The French were right in their treat- 
ment of Verlaine: they condemned the sin, while 
forgiving the sinner because of his genius. The 
rigour in England is mere puritanic hypocrisy, 
shortsightedness and racial self-esteem.” 

“All I can say, Frank, is, [ would not limit 
individual desire in any way. What right has 


498 OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 


society to punish us unless it can prove we have 
hurt or injured someone else against his will? — 
Besides, if you limit passion you impoverish 
life, you weaken the mainspring of art, and nar- 
row the realm of beauty.” 

““All societies,” I replied, “‘and most indi- 
viduals, too, punish what they dislike, right or 
wrong. ‘There are bad smells which do not 
injure anyone; yet the manufacturers of them 
would be indicted for committing a nuisance. 
Nor does your plea that by limiting the choice 
of passion you impoverish life, appeal to me. 
On the contrary, I think I could prove that 
passion, the desire of the man for the woman 
and the woman for the man, has been enor- 
mously strengthened in modern times. Chris- — 
tianity has created, or at least cultivated, mod- 
esty, and modesty has sharpened desire. Chris- 
tianity has helped to lift woman to an equality 
with man, and this modern intellectual devel- 
opment has again intensified passion out of all 
knowledge. ‘The woman who is not a slave 
but an equal, who gives herself according to 
her own feeling, is infinitely more desirable to 
a man than any submissive serf who is always 
waiting on his will. And this movement in- 
tensifying passion is every day gaining force. 

“We have a far higher love in us than the 
Greeks, infinitely higher and more intense than 


OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 499 


the Romans knew; our sensuality is like a river 
banked in with stone parapets, the current 
flows higher and more vehemently in the nar- 
rower bed.” 

“You may talk as you please, Frank, but 
you will never get me to believe that what I 
know is good to me, is evil. Suppose I like a 
food that is poison to other people, and yet 
quickens me; how dare they punish me for eat- 
ing of it?” 

“They would say,” I replied, “‘that they only 
punish you for inducing others to eat it.” 

He broke in: “It is all ignorant prejudice, 
Frank; the world is slowly growing more tol- 
erant and one day men will be ashamed of their 
barbarous treatment of me, as they are now 
ashamed of the torturings of the Middle Ages. 
The current of opinion is making in our favour 
and not against us.” 

*“You don’t believe what you say,” I cried; 
“if you really thought humanity was going your 
Way, you would have been delighted to play 
Galileo. Instead of writing a book in prison 
condemning your companion who pushed you 
to discovery and disgrace, you would have 
written a book vindicating your actions. ‘I 
am a martyr,’ you would have cried, ‘and not 
a criminal, and everyone who holds the con- 
trary is wrong.’ 


500 OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 


“You would have said to the jury: 

“Tn spite of your beliefs, and your cherished 
dogmas; in spite of your religion and prejudice 
and fanatical hatred of me, you are wrong and 
I am right: the world does move.’ 


“But you didn’t say that, and you don’t 


think it. If you did you would be glad you 
went into the Queensberry trial, glad you were 
accused, glad you were imprisoned and pun- 
ished because all these things must bring your 
vindication more quickly; you are sorry for them 


all, because in your heart you know you were ~ 


wrong. ‘This old world in the main is right: it’s 
you who are wrong.” 

“Of course everything can be argued, Frank; 
but I hold to my conviction: the best minds 
even now don’t condemn us, and the world is 
becoming more tolerant.’ [ didn’t justify my- 
self in court because I was told I should be pun- 
ished lightly if I respected the common prej- 
udices, and when I tried to speak afterwards 
the judge would not let me.” 

“And I believe,” I retorted, “that you were 
hopelessly beaten and could never have made a 
fight of it, because you felt the Time-spirit was 
against you. How else was a silly, narrow 
judge able to wave you to silence? Do you 
think he could have silenced me? Not all the 


1Cfr. end of Appendix:—A Last Word, 


ie al i wi ie et 
Ce iy ee a ee ey ae 


; 
‘ 
q 
: 


OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 5or 


judges in Christendom. Let me give you an 
example. I believe with Voltaire that when 
modesty goes out of life it goes into the language 
as prudery. I am quite certain that our present 
habit of not discussing sexual questions in our 
books is bound to disappear, and that free and 
dignified speech will take the place of our 
present prurient mealy-mouthedness. I have 
long thought it possible, probable even, in the 
present state of society in England, where we 
are still more or less under the heel of the illit- 
erate and prudish Philistinism of our middle 
class, that I might be had up to answer some 
charge of publishing an indecent book. The 
current of the time appears to be against me. 
In the spacious days of Elizabeth, in the modish 
time of the Georges, a freedom of speech was 

habitual which to-day is tabooed. Our cases, 
therefore, are somewhat alike. Do you think I 
should dread the issue or allow myself to be 
silenced by a judge? I would set forth my de- 
fence before the judge and before the jury with 
the assurance of victory in me! I should not 
minimise what I had written; I should not try 
to explain it away; I should seek to make it 
stronger. I should justify every word, and 
finally I’d warn both judge and jury that if they 
condemned and punished me they would only 
make my ultimate triumph more conspicuous. 


502 OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 


‘All the great men of the past are with me,’ I 
would cry; ‘all the great minds of to-day in 
other countries, and some of the best in Eng- 
land; condemn me at your peril: you will only 
condemn yourselves. You are spitting against 
the wind and the shame will be on your own faces.’ 

“Do you believe I should be left to suffer? 
I doubt it even in England to-day. If I’m right, 
and I’m sure I’m right, then about me there 
would be an invisible cloud of witnesses. You 
would see a strange movement of opinion in 
my favour. The judge would probably lecture 
me and bind me over to come up for judgment; 
but if he sentenced me vindictively then the 
Home Secretary! would be petitioned and the 
movement in my favour would grow, till it swept 
away opposition. ‘This is the very soul of my 
faith. If I did not believe with every fibre in 
me that this poor stupid world is honestly grop- 
ing its way up the altar stairs to God, and not 
down, I would not live in it an hour.” 

“Why do you argue against me, Frank? It 
is brutal of you.” 

“To induce you even now to turn and pull 


1This was written years before a Home Secretary, Mr. Reginald 
MacKenna, tortured women and girls in prison in England by forcible 
feeding, because they tried to present petitions in favour of Woman’s 
Suffrage. He afterwards defended himself in Parliament by declaring 
that ‘‘ ‘forcible feeding’ was not unpleasant.” The torturers of the 
Inquisition also befouled cruelty with hypocritical falsehood: they would 
burn their victims; but would not shed bleod. 


OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 503 


yourself out of the mud. You are forty odd 
years of age, and the keenest sensations of life 
are over for you. Turn back whilst there’s time, 
get to work, write your ballad and your plays, 
and not the Alexanders alone, but all the people 
who really count, the best of all countries— 
the salt of the earth—will give you another 
chance. Begin to work and you’ll be borne up 
on all hands: No one sinks to the dregs but by 
his own weight. If you don’t bear fruit why 
should men care for you?” 

He shrugged his shoulders and turned from 
me with disdainful indifference. 

*“T’ve done enough for their respect, Frank, 
and received nothing but hatred. Every man 
must dree his own weird. ‘Thank Heaven, life’s 
not without compensations. I’m sorry I cannot 
please you,” and he added carelessly, ““M 
has asked me to go and spend the summer 
with him at Gland in Switzerland. He does not 
mind whether I write or not.” 

“‘T assure you,” I cried, “‘it is not my pleasure 
IT am thinking about. What can it matter to 
me whether you write or not? It is your own 
good I am thinking of.” 

“Oh, bother good! One’s friends like one as 
one is; the outside public hate one or scoff at 
one as they please.” 

“Well, I hope I shall always be your friend,” 


504 OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 


I replied, “‘but you will yet be forced to see, 
Oscar, that everyone grows tired of holding up 
an empty sack.”’ 

“Frank, you insult me.” 

**T don’t mean to; I’m sorry; I shall never be 
so brutally frank again; but you had to hear the 
truth for once.” 

“Then, Frank, you only cared for me in so 
far as I agreed with you?” 

“Oh, that’s not fair,” I replied. ‘I have 
tried with all my strength to prevent you com- 
mitting soul-suicide, but if you are resolved on 
it, 1 can’t prevent you. I must draw away. | 
can do no good.” 

“Then you won’t help me for the rest of the 
winter?”’ 

“Of course I will,’ I-replied, “I shall do all 
I promised and more; but there’s a limit now, 
and till now the only limit was my power, not 
my will.” 

It was at Napoule a few days later that an 
incident occurred which gave me to a certain 
extent a new sidelight on Oscar’s nature by 
showing just what he thought of me. I make 
no scruple of setting forth his opinion here in 
its entirety, though the confession took place 
after a futile evening when he had talked to 
M. of great houses in England and the great 
people he had met there. The talk had evidently 


ee 


ee a A es eae tee 


OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 505 


impressed M. as much as it had bored me. 
I must first say that Oscar’s bedroom was sep- 
arated from mine by a large sitting-room we 
had in common. As a rule I worked in my bed- 
room in the mornings and he spent a great deal 
of time out of doors. On this especial morning, 
however, I had gone into the sitting-room early 
to write some letters. I heard him get up and 
splash about in his bath: shortly afterwards he 
must have gone into the next room, which was 
M ’s, for suddenly he began talking to him 
in a loud voice from one room to the other, as 
if he were carrying on a conversation already 
begun, through the open door. 

“Of course it’s absurd of Frank talking of 
social position or the great people of English 
society at all. He never had any social position 
to be compared with mine!” (The petulant tone 
made me smile; but what Oscar said was true: 
nor did I ever pretend to have such a position.) 

“‘He had a house in Park Lane and owned 
The Saturday Review and had a certain power; 
but I was the centre of every party, the most 
honoured guest everywhere, at Clieveden and 
Taplow Court and Clumber. The difference 
was Frank was proud of meeting Balfour while 
Balfour was proud of meeting me: d’yesee?” (I 
was so interested J was unconscious of any in- 
discretion in listening: it made me smile to hear 


506 OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 


that I was proud of meeting Arthur Balfour: it 
would never have occurred to me that I should 
be proud of that: still no doubt Oscar was right 
in a general way). 

“When Frank talks of literature, he amuses 
me: he pretends to bring new standards into it; 
he does: he brings America to judge Oxford and 
London, much like bringing Macedon or Beeotia 
to judge Athens—dquite ridiculous! What can 
Americans know about English literature? . . . 

“Yet the curious thing is he has read a lot 
and has a sort of vision: that Shakespeare stuff 
of his is extraordinary; but he takes sincerity for 
style, and poetry as poetry has no appeal for him. 
You heard him admit that himself last night.... 

**He’s comic, really: curiously provincial like 
all Americans. Fancy a Jeremiad preached by 
a man in a fur coat! Frank’s comic. But he’s 
really kind and fights for his friends. He helped 
me in prison greatly: sympathy is a sort of re- 
ligion to him: that’s why we can meet without 
murder and separate without suicide... . 

“Talking literature with him is very like 
playing Rugby football. . . . I never did play 
football, you know; but talking literature with 
Frank must be very like playing Rugby where 
you end by being kicked violently through your 
own goal,” and he laughed delightedly. 

I had listened without thinking as I often lis- 


OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 507 


tened to his talk for the mere music of the utter- 
ance; now, at a break in the monologue, I went 
into the next room, feeling that to listen con- 
sciously would be unworthy. On the whole his 
view of me was not unkindly: he disliked to hear 
any opinion that differed from his own and it 
never came into his head that Oxford was no 
nearer the meridian of truth than Lawrence, 
Kansas, and certainly at least as far from 
Heaven. 

Some weeks later I left La Napoule and went 
On a visit to some friends. He wrote complain- 
ing that without me the place was dull. I 
wired him and went over to Nice to meet him 
and we lunched together at the Café de la 
Regence. He was terribly downcast, and yet 
rebellious. He had come over to stay at Nice, 
and stopped at the Hotel Terminus, a tenth-rate 
hotel near the station; the proprietor called on 
him two or three days afterwards and informed 
him he must leave the hotel, as his room had 
been let. 

‘Evidently someone has told him, Frank, who 
Tam. What am I to do?” 

I soon found him a better hotel where he was 
well treated, but the incident coming on top 
of the Alexander affair seemed to have fright- 
ened him. 

‘There are too many English on this coast,” 


508 OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 


he said to me one day, “and they are all brutal 
to me. I think I should like to go to Italy if 
you would not mind.” 

“The world is all before you,” I replied. “I 
shall only be too glad for you to get a com- 
fortable place,” and I gave him the money he 
wanted. He lingered on at Nice for nearly a 
week. I saw him several times. He lunched 
with me at the Reserve once at Beaulieu, and 
was full of delight at the beauty of the bay 
and the quiet of it. In the middle of the meal 
some English people came in and showed their 
dislike of him rudely. He at once shrank into 
himself, and as soon as possible made some 
pretext to leave. Of course I went with him. 
I was more than sorry for him, but I felt as 
unable to help him as I should have been un- 
able to hold him back if he had determined to 


throw himself down a precipice. 


Me ant ; ae 
a ee. ee ae 


CHAPTER XXV 


“The Gods are just and of our pleasant vices 
Make instruments to plague us.” 


It was full summer before I met Oscar again; 
he had come back to Paris and taken up his 
old quarters in the mean little hotel in the Rue 
des Beaux Arts. He lunched and dined with 
me as usual. His talk was as humorous and 
charming as ever, and he was just as engaging 
‘a companion. For the first time, however, he 
complained of his health: 

*““T ate some mussels and oysters in Italy, and 
they must have poisoned me; for I have come 
out in great red blotches all over my arms and 
- chest and back, and I don’t feel well.” 

_ “Have you consulted a doctor?” 

“Oh, yes, but doctors are no good: they all 
advise you differently; the best of it is they all 
listen to you with an air of intense interest 
when you are talking about yourself—which is 
an excellent tonic.” 

“They sometimes tell one what’s the mat- 
ter; give a name and significance to the un- 
known,” I interjected. 

“They bore me by forbidding me to smoke 

599 


510 OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 


and drink. ‘They are worse than M——, who 
grudged me his wine.” 

“What do you mean?” I asked in won- 
der. 

“A tragi-comic history, Frank. You were so 
right about M and I was mistaken in him. 
You know he wanted me to stay with him at 
Gland in Switzerland, begged me to come, said 
he would do everything for me. When the 
weather got warm at Genoa I went to him. At 
first he seemed very glad to see me and made 
me welcome. ‘The food was not very good, the 
drink anything but good, still I could not com- 
plain, and I put up with the discomforts. But 
in a week or two the wine disappeared, and beer 
took its place, and I suggested I must be going. 
He begged me so cordially not to go that I 
stayed on; but in a little while I noticed that 
the beer got less and less in quantity, and one 
day when I ventured to ask for a second bottle 
at lunch he told me that it cost a great deal 
and that he could not afford it. Of course I 
made some decent pretext and left his house 
as soon as possible. If one has to suffer poverty, 
one had best suffer alone. But to get discom- 
forts grudgingly and as a charity is the ex- 
tremity of shame. I prefer to look on it from 
the other side; M grudging me his small 
beer belongs to farce,” 


OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS SII 


He spoke with bitterness and contempt, as 
he used never to speak of anyone. 

I could not help sympathising with him, 
though visibly the cloth was wearing thread- 
bare. He asked me now at once for money, 
and a little later again and again. Formerly he 
had invented pretexts; he had not received his 
allowance when he expected it, or he was both- 
ered by a bill and so forth; but now he simply 
begged and begged, railing the while at fortune. 
It was distressing. He wanted money con- 
stantly, and spent it as always like water, with- 
out a thought. 

I asked him one day whether he had seen much 
of his soldier boy since he had returned to Paris. 

“IT have seen him, Frank, but not often,” 
and he laughed gaily. “It’s a farce-comedy; 
sentiment always begins romantically and ends 
in laughter—tabulae solvuntur risu. I taught him 
so much, Frank, that he was made a corporal 
and forthwith a nursemaid fell in love with his 
stripes. He’s devoted to her: I suppose he likes 
to play teacher in his turn.” 

‘“‘And so the great romantic passion comes 
to this tame conclusion?”’ 

“What would you, Frank? Whatever begins 
must also end.” 

“Is there anyone else?” I asked, “or have 
you learned reason at last?” : 


512 OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 


‘‘Of course there’s always someone else, Frank: 
change is the essence of passion: the reason you 
talk of is merely another name for impotence.” 

“Montaigne declares,”.I said, “that love be- 


longs to early youth, ‘the next period after in- 


fancy,’ is his phrase, but that is at the best a 
Frenchman’s view of it. Sophocles was nearer 
the truth when he called himself happy in that 
age had freed him from the whip of passion. 
When are you going to reach that serenity?” 

“Never, Frank, never, I hope: life without 
desire would not be worth living tome. As one 
gets older one is more difficult to please: but the 
sting of pleasure is even keener than in youth 
and far more egotistic. 

“One comes to understand the Marquis de 
Sade and that strange, scarlet story of de Retz 
—the pleasure they got from inflicting pain, the 
curious, intense underworld of cruelty—” 

“That’s unlike you, Oscar,” I broke in. “I 
thought you shrank from giving pain always: to 
me it’s the unforgivable sin.” 

“To me, also,” he rejoined instantly, “intel- 
lectually one may understand it; but in reality 
it’s horrible. I want my pleasure unembittered 
by any drop of pain. That reminds me: I read 
a terrible, little book the other day, Octave 
Mirbeau’s ‘Le Jardin des Supplices’; it is quite 
awful, a sadique joy in pain pulses through it; 
but for all that it’s wonderful. His soul seems 


— Wr 
a 


OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS = 513 


to have wandered in fearsome places. You with 
your contempt of fear, will face the book with 
courage—I ‘i 

“I simply couldn’t read it,” I replied; “it 
was revolting to me, impossible——” 

““A sort of grey adder,” he summed up and I 
nodded in complete agreement. 

I passed the next winter on the Riviera. A 
speculation which I had gone in for there had 
caused me heavy loss and much anxiety. In 
the spring I returned to Paris, and of course, 
asked him to meet me. He was much brighter 
than he had been for a long time. Lord Alfred 
Douglas, it appeared, had come in for a large 
legacy from his father’s estate and had given 
him some money, and he was much more cheer- 
ful. We had a great lunch at Durand’s and he 
was at his very best. I asked him about his 
health. 

“Tm all right, Frank, but the rash continu- 
ally comes back, a ghostly visitant, Frank: I’m 
afraid the doctors are in league with the devil. 
It generally returns after a good dinner, a sort 
of aftermath of champagne. The doctors say I 
must not drink champagne, and must stop 
smoking, the silly people, who regard pleasure 
as their natural enemies; whereas it is our pleas- 
ures which provide them with a living!” 

He looked fairly well, I thought; he was a 
little fatter, his skin a little dingier than of old, 


S14 OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 


and he had grown very deaf, but in every other 
way he seemed at his best, though he was cer- 
tainly drinking too freely—spirits between times 
as well as wine at meals. 

I had heard on the Riviera during the winter 
that Smithers had tried to buy a play from him, 
so one day I brought up the subject. 

“By the way, Smithers says that you have 
been working on your play; you know the one I 
mean, the one with the great screen scene in it.” 

“Oh, yes, Frank,” he remarked indifferently. 

““Won’t you tell me what you’ve done?” I 
asked. ‘“‘Have you written any of it?” 

“No, Frank,” he replied casually, “it’s the 
scenario Smithers talked about.” 

A little while afterwards he asked me for 
money. I told him I could not afford any at 
the moment, and pressed him to write his play. 

“I shall never write again, Frank,” he said. 
“T can’t, I simply can’t face my thoughts. Don’t 
ask me!” 'Then suddenly: “Why don’t you buy 
the scenario and write the play yourself?” 

“‘T don’t care for the stage,” I replied; “‘it’s 
a sort of rude encaustic work I don’t like; its 
effects are theatrical!” 

““A play pays far better than a book, you 
know " 

But I was not interested. That evening 
thinking over what he had said, I realised all 
at once that a story I had in mind to write would 


OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 515 


suit “the screen scene” of Oscar’s scenario; why 
shouldn’t I write a play instead of a story? 
When we met next day I broached the idea to 
Oscar: ; 

“‘T have a story in my head,” I said, “‘which 
would fit into that scenario of yours, so far as 
you have sketched it tome. I could write it as 
a play and do the second, third and fourth acts 
very quickly, as all the personages are alive to 
me. Could you do the first act?” 

**Of course I could, Frank.” 

But,” I said, “will you?” 

“What would be the good, you could not sell 
it.; frank.” 

‘In any case,” I went on, “I could try; but 
I would infinitely prefer you to write the whole 
play if you would; then it would sell fast enough.” 

“Oh, Frank, don’t ask me.” 

The idea of the collaboration was a mistake; 
but it seemed to me at the moment the best 
way to get him to do something. Suddenly he 
asked me to give him £50 for the scenario at 
once, then I could do what I liked with it. 

After a good deal of talk I consented to give 
him the £50 if he would promise to write the 
first act; he promised and I gave him the money.? 

A little later I noticed a certain tension in 
his relations with Lord Alfred Douglas. One day 


1The rest of this story concerns me chiefly and I have therefore 
relegated it to the Appendix for those who care to read it. 


516 OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 


he told me frankly that Lord Alfred Douglas had 
come into a fortune of £15,000 or £20,000, “and,” 
he added, ‘‘of course he’s always able to get 
money. He’ll marry an American millionairess 
or some rich widow” (Oscar’s ideas of life were 
nearly all conventional, derived from novels and 
plays); ‘“‘and I wanted him to give me enough 
to make my life comfortable, to settle enough 
on me to make a decent life possible to me. 
It would only have cost him two or three thou- 
sand pounds, perhaps less. I get £150 a year 
and I wanted him to make it up to £300.! I 
lost that through going to him at Naples. I 
think he ought to give me that at the very least, 
don’t you? Won’t you speak to him, Frank?” 

“T could not possibly interfere,”’ I replied. 

“TI gave him everything,” he went on, in a 
depressed way. ‘‘When I had money, he never 
had to ask for it; all that was mine was his. 


And now that he is rich, I have to beg from him, 
and he gives me small sums and puts me off. 


It is terrible of him; it is really very, very wrong 
of him.” 

I changed the subject as soon as I could; 
there was a note of bitterness which I did not 
like, which indeed I had already remarked in him. 

I was destined very soon to hear the other 
side. A day or two later Lord Alfred Douglas 


1Oscar was already getting £300 a year from his wife and Robert Ross, 
to say nothing of the hundreds given to him from time to time by other 
friends. 


ee ee OK ge 


OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 517 


told me that he had bought some racehorses 
and was training them at Chantilly; would I 
come down and see them? 

“IT am not much of a judge of racehorses,” I 
replied, “and I don’t know much about racing; 
but I should not mind coming down one even- 
ing. I could spend the night at an hotel, and 
see the horses and your stable in the morning. 
The life of the English stable lads in France 
must be rather peculiar.” 

“It is droll,” he said, “a complete English 
colony in France. ‘There are practically no 
French jockeys or trainers worth their salt; it is 
all English, English slang, English ways, even 
English food and of course English drinks. No 
French boy seems to have nerve enough to 
make a good rider.” 

J made an arrangement with him and went 
down. I missed my train and was very late; 
I found that Lord Alfred Douglas had dined 
and gone out. I had my dinner, and about 
midnight went up to my room. Half an hour 
later there came a knocking at the door. I 
opened it and found Lord Alfred Douglas. 

“May I come in?” he asked. “I’m glad 
you’ve not gone to bed yet.” 

“Of course,” I said, ‘“‘what is it??? He was 
pale and seemed extraordinarily excited. 

“T have had such a row with Oscar,” he 
jerked out, nervously moving about (I noticed 


518 OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 


the strained white face I had seen before at the 
Café Royal), “‘such a row, and I wanted to 
speak to you about it. Of course you know 
in the old days when his plays were being given 
in London he was rich and gave me some money, 
and now he says I ought to settle a large sum 
on him; I think it ridiculous, don’t you?” 

“T would rather not say anything about it,” 
I replied; “I don’t know enough about the 
circumstances.” 

He was too filled with a sense of his own 
injuries; too excited to catch my tone or under- 
stand any reproof in my attitude. 

“Oscar is really too dreadful,’ he went on; 
“he is quite shameless now; he begs and begs 
and begs, and of course I have given him 
money, have given him hundreds, quite as 
much as he ever gave me: but he is insatiable 
and recklessly extravagant besides. Of course 
I want to be quite fair to him: I’ve already 
given him back all he gave me. Don’t you 
think that is all anyone can ask of me?” 

I looked at him in astonishment. 

“That is for you and Oscar,” I said, “‘to decide 
together. No one else can judge between you.” 

“Why not?” he snapped out in his irritable 
way, ‘“‘you know us both and our relations.” 

“No,” I replied, “I don’t know all the obli- 
gations and the interwoven services. Besides, 
I could not judge fairly between you.” 


OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 519 


He turned on me angrily, though I had spoken 
with as much kindness as I could. 

“He seemed to want to make you judge 
between us,” he cried. ‘“‘I don’t care who’s 
the judge. I think if you give a man back what 
he*has given you, that is all he can ask. It’s a 
d—d lot more than most people get in this 
world.” 

After a pause he started off on a new line of 
thought: 

“The first time I ever noticed any fault in 
Oscar was over that ‘Salome’ translation. He’s 
appallingly conceited. You know I did the 
play into English. I found that his choice of 
words was poor, anything but good; his prose 
is wooden. : 

“Of course he’s not a poet,” he broke off 
contemptuously, “even‘you must admit that.” 

‘““T know what you mean,”’ I replied; “though 
I should have to make a vast reservation in 
favour of the man who wrote ‘The Ballad of 
Reading Gaol.’ ”’ 

“One ballad doesn’t make a man a poet,” he 
barked; “I mean by poet one to whom verse 
lends power: in that sense he’s not a poet and I 
am.” His tone was that of defiant challenge. 

“You are certainly,” I replied. 

“Well, I did the translation of ‘Salome’ very 
carefully, as no one else could have done it,” 
and he flushed angrily, “‘and all the while Oscar 


520 OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 


kept on altering it for the worse. At last I had 
to tell him the truth, and we had a row. He 
imagines he’s the greatest person in the world, 
and the only person to be considered. His con- 
ceit is stupid. . . . I helped! him again and 
again with that ‘Ballad of Reading Gaol’ you’re 
always praising: I suppose he’d deny that now. 

“He’s got his money back; what more can he 
want? He disgusts me when he begs.” 

I could not contain myself altogether. 

“‘He seems to blame you,” I said quietly, 
“for egging him on to that insane action against 
your father which brought him to ruin.” 

“T’ve no doubt he’d find some reason to 
blame me,” he whipped out. “ How did I know 
how the case would go? . . . . Why did he take 
my advice, if he didn’t want to? He was surely 
old enough to know his own interest. .... 
He’s simply disgusting now; he’s getting fat 
and bloated, and always demanding money, 
money, money, like a daughter of the horse- 
leech—just as if he had a claim to it.” 

I could not stand it any longer; I had to try 
to move him to kindness. 

“Sometimes one gives willingly to a man 
one has never had anything from. Misery and 
want in one we like and admire have a very 
strong claim.” 

+The truth about this I have already stated. 


OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 521 


“I do not see that there is any claim at all,’ 
he cried bitterly, as if the very word maddened 
him, ‘“‘and I am not going to pamper him any 
more. He could earn all the money he wants 
if he would only write; but he won’t do anything. 
He is lazy, and getting lazier and lazier every 
day; and he drinks far too much. He is intol- 
erable. I thought when he kept asking me for 
that money to-night, he was like an old pros- 
titute.” 

“Good God!” I cried. “Good God! Has it 
come to that between you?” 

“Yes,” he repeated, not heeding what I said, 
“he was just like an old fat prostitute,” and he 
gloated over the word, “‘and I told him so.” 

I looked at the man but could not speak; 
indeed there was nothing to be said. Surely 
at last, I thought, Oscar Wilde has reached the 
lowest depth. I could think of nothing but 
Oscar; this hard, small, bitter nature made 
Oscar’s suffering plain to me. 

fie) can do no good,” I said, ‘do you 
mind letting me sleep? I’m simply tired to 
death.” 

“I’m sorry,” he said, looking for his hat; 
“will you come out in the morning and see the 
¢ gees ? pee 

“I don’t think so,” I replied, “I’m in- 
capable of a resolution now, I’m so tired I 


522 OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 


would rather sleep. I think I’ll go up to Paris 
in the morning. I have something rather urg- 
ent to do.” 

He said “Good night” and went away. 

I lay awake, my eyes prickling with sorrow 
and sympathy for poor Oscar, insulted in his 
misery and destitution, outraged and trodden 
on by the man he had loved, by the man who 
had thrust him into the ity 2 eee 


1 Though I have reported this conversation as faithfully as I can and 
have indeed softened the impression Lord Alfred Douglas made upon 
me at the time; still I am conscious that I may be doing him some in- 
justice. I have never really been in sympathy with him and it may 
well be that in reporting him here faithfully I am showing him at his 
worst. I am aware that the incident does not reveal him at his best. 
He has proved since in his writings and notably in some superb sonnets 
that he had a real affection and admiration for Oscar Wilde. If I have 
been in any degree unfair to him I can best correct it, I think, by repro- 
ducing here the noble sonnet he wrote on Oscar after his death: in sheer 
beauty and sincerity of feeling it ranks with Shelley’s lament for Keats: 


The Dead Poet? 


I dreamed of him last night, I saw his face 

All radiant and unshadowed of distress, 

And as of old, in music measureless, 

I heard his golden voice and marked him trace 
Under the common thing the hidden grace, 
And conjure wonder out of emptiness, 

Till mean things put on beauty like a dress 
And all the world was an enchanted place. 


And then methought outside a fast locked gate 

I mourned the loss of unrecorded words, 

Forgotten tales and mysteries half said 

Wonders that might have been articulate, 

And voiceless thoughts like murdered singing birds 
And so I woke and knew that he was dead. 


2In the Appendix I have published the first sketch of this fine sonnet: 
lovers of poetry will like to compare them. 


OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 523 


I made up my mind to go to Oscar at once 
and try to comfort him a little. After all, I 
thought, another fifty pounds or so wouldn’t make 
a great deal of difference to me, and I dwelt on 
the many delightful hours I had passed with 
him, hours of gay talk and superb intellectual 
enjoyment. 

I went up by the morning train to Paris, and 
drove across the river to Oscar’s hotel. 

He had two rooms, a small sitting-room and 
a still smaller bedroom adjoining. He was lying 
half-dressed on the bed as I entered. The rooms 
affected me unpleasantly. They were ordinary, 
mean little French rooms, furnished without 
taste; the usual mahogany chairs, gilt clock on 
the mantelpiece and a preposterous bilious paper 
on the walls. What struck me was the disorder 
everywhere; books all over the round table; 
books on the chairs; books on the floor and 
higgledy-piggledy, here a pair of socks, there a 
hat and cane, and on the floor his overcoat. 
The sense of order and neatness which he used 
to have in his rooms at Tite Street was utterly 
lacking. He was not living here, intent on mak- 
ing the best of things; he was merely existing 
without plan or purpose. 

I told him I wanted him to come to lunch. 
While he was finishing dressing it came to me 
that his clothes had undergone much the same 


524 OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 


change as his dwelling. In his golden days in — 
London he had been a good deal of a dandy; he — 
usually wore white waistcoats at night; was par- — 
ticular about the flowers in his buttonhole, his — 
gloves and cane. Now he was decently dressed — 
and that was all; as far below the average as he 
had been above it. Clearly, he had let go of 
himself and no longer took pleasure in the vani- 
ties: it seemed to me a bad sign. 

I had always thought of him as very healthy, — 
likely to live till sixty or seventy; but he had no 
longer any hold on himself and that depressed — 
me; some spring of life seemed broken in him. © 
Bosie Douglas’ second betrayal had been the — 
coup de grace. 

In the carriage he was preoccupied, out of — 
sorts, and immediately began to apologise. 3 

“T shall be poor company, Frank,” he warned 
me with quivering lips. | 

The fragrant summer air in the Champs 
Elysées seemed to revive him a little, but he © 
was evidently lost in bitter reflections and 
scarcely noticed where he was going. From ~ 
time to time he sighed heavily as if oppressed. — 
I talked as well as I could of this and that, — 
tried to lure him away from the hateful subject 
that I knew must be in his mind; but all in vain. 
Towards the end of the lunch he said gravely: 

“T want you to tell me something, Frank; — 


OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS = 525 


{ want you to tell me honestly if you think I 
am in the wrong. I wish I could think I was. 
oe you know I> spoke to you the. other 
day about Bosie; he is rich now and he is throw- 
ing his money away with both hands in racing. 

“TI asked him to settle £1,500 or £2,000 on 
me to buy me an annuity, or to do something 
that would give me £150 a year. You said 
you did not care to ask him, so I did. I told 
him it was really his duty to do it at once, and 
he turned round and lashed me savagely with 
his tongue. He called me dreadful names. 
Said dreadful things to me, Frank. I did not 
think it was possible to suffer more than I 
suffered in prison, but he has left me bleeding 

. . and the fine eyes filled with tears. See- 
ing that I remained silent, he cried out: 

“Frank, you must tell me for our friendship’s 
sake. Is it my fault? Was he wrong or was I 
wrong?” 

His weakness was pathetic, or was it that 
his affection was still so great that he wanted 
to blame himself rather than his friend? 

““Of course he seems to me to be wrong,” I 
said, “utterly wrong.” I could not help saying 
it and I went on: 

“But you know his temper is insane; if he 
even praises himself, as he did to me lately, he 
gets into a rage in order to do it, and perhaps 


5206: OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 


unwittingly you annoyed him by the way you 
asked. If you put it to his generosity and vain- 
glory you would get it easier than from his 
sense of justice and right. He has not much 
moral sense.” 

“Oh, Frank,” he broke in earnestly, “I put 
it to him as well as I could, quite quietly and 
gently. I talked of our old affection, of the 
good and evil days we had passed together: you 
know I could never be harsh to him, never. 

“There never was,” he burst out, in a sort 
of exaltation, “there never was in the world 
such a betrayal. Do you remember once telling — 
me that the only flaw you could find in the 
perfect symbolism of the gospel story was that 
Jesus was betrayed by Judas, the foreigner from — 
Kerioth, when he should have been betrayed 
by John, the beloved disciple; for it is only 
those we love who can betray us? Frank, how 
true, how tragically true that is! It is those we 
love who betray us with a kiss.” 

He was silent for some time and then went 
on wearily, “I wish you would speak to him, 
Frank, and show him how unjust and unkind 
he is to me.” 

“T cannot possibly do that, Oscar,” I said, 
“TI do not know all the relations between you 
and the myriad bands that unite you: I should 
only do harm and not good.” 


OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 527 


“Frank,” he cried, ‘you do know, you must 
know that he is responsible for everything, for 
my downfall and my ruin. It was he who 
drove me to fight with his father. I begged 
him not to, but he whipped me to it; asked me 
what his father could do; pointed out to me 
contemptuously that he could prove nothing; 
said he was the most loathsome, hateful creature 
in the world, and that it was my duty to stop 
him, and that if I did not, everyone would be 
laughing at me, and he could never care for a 
coward. All his family, his brother and his 
mother, too, begged me to attack Queensberry, 
all promised me their support and afterwards— 

“You know, Frank, in the Café Royal before 
the trial how Bosie spoke to you, when you 
warned me and implored me to drop the insane 
suit and go abroad; how angry he got. You 
were not a friend of mine, he said. You know 
he drove me to ruin in order to revenge himself 
on his father, and then left me to suffer. 

“And that’s not the worst of it, Frank: I 
came out of prison determined not to see him 
any more. I promised my poor wife I would 
not see him again. I had forgiven him; but I 
did not want to see him. I had suffered too 
much by him and through him, far too much. 
And then he wrote and wrote of his love, cry- 
ing it to me every hour, begging me to come, 


528 OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 


telling me he only wanted me, in order to be 
happy, me in the whole world. How could I 
help believing him, how could I keep away 
from him? At last I yielded and went to him, 
and as soon as the difficulties began he turned 
on me in Naples like a wild beast, blaming me 
and insulting me. 

“T had to fly to Paris, having lost everything 
through him—wife and income and self-respect, 
everything; but I always thought that he was 
at least generous as a man of his name should 
be: I had no idea he could be stingy and mean; 
but now he is comparatively rich, he prefers to 
squander his money on jockeys and trainers and 
horses, of which he knows nothing, instead of 
lifting me out of my misery. Surely it is not. 
too much to ask him to give me a tenth when I 
gave him all? Won’t you ask him?” 

“T think he ought to have done what you 
want, without asking,” I admitted, “but I am 
certain my speaking would not do any good. He 
shows me hatred already whenever I do not 
agree with him. Hate is nearer to him always 
than sympathy: he is his father’s son, Oscar, 
and I can do nothing. I cannot even speak 
to him about it.” 

“Oh, Frank, you ought to,” said Oscar. 

‘““But suppose he retorted and said you led 
him astray, what could I answer?” 


99 


OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 529 


“Led him astray!” cried Oscar, starting up, 
*‘you cannot believe that. You know better than 
that. It is not true. It is he who always led, 
always dominated me; he is as imperious as a 
Cesar. It was he who began our intimacy: 
he who came to me in London when I did not 
want to see him, or rather, Frank, I wanted 
to but I was afraid; at the very beginning I was 
afraid of what it would all lead to, and I avoided 
him; the desperate aristocratic pride in him, the 
dreadful bold, imperious temper in him terrified 
me. But he came to London and sent for me 
to come to him, said he would come to my 
house if I didn’t. I went, thinking I could reason 
with him; but it was impossible. When I told him 
we must be very careful, for I was afraid of 
what might happen, he made fun of my fears, 
and encouraged me. He knew that they’d never 
dare to punish him; he’s allied to half the peer- 
age and he did not care what became of me... . 

*“He led me first to the street, introduced me 
to the male prostitution in London. From the 
beginning to the end he has driven me like the 
(strum of which the Greeks wrote, which drove 
the ill-fated to disaster. 

““And now he says he owes me nothing; I 
have no claim, I who gave to him without count- 
ing; he says he needs all his money for himself: 
he wants to win races and to write poetry, 


530 OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 


Frank, the pretty verses which he thinks poetry. 

‘“‘He has ruined me, soul and body, and now 
he puts himself in the balance against me and 
declares he outweighs me. Yes, Frank, he 
does; he told me the other day I was not a 
poet, not a true poet, and he was, Alfred Douglas 
greater than Oscar Wilde. 

“T have not done much in the world,” he 
went on hotly, “SI know it better than anyone, 
not a quarter of what I should have done, but 
there are some things I have done which the 
world will not forget, can hardly forget. If all 
the tribe of Douglas from the beginning and all 
their achievements were added together and 
thrown into the balance, they would not weigh 
as dust in comparison. Yet he reviled me, 
Frank, whipped me, shamed me. . . . He has 
broken me, he has broken me, the man I loved; 
my very heart is a cold weight in me,”.... 
and he got up and moved aside with the tears 
pouring down his cheeks. 

“Don’t take it so much to heart,” IJ said in 
a minute or two, going after him, “the loss of 
affection I cannot help, but a hundred or so a 
year is not much; I will see that you get that 
every year.” 

“Oh, Frank, it is not the money; it is his 
denial, his insults, his hate that kills me; the 
fact that I have ruined myself for someone who 


OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 531 


cares nothing; who puts a little money before 
me; it is as if I were choked with mud. 

Once I thought myself master of my ye lites 
lord of my fate, who could do what I pleaked 
and would always succeed. I was as a crowned 
king till I met him, and now I am an exile and 
outcast and despised. 

“T have lost my way in life; the passers-by all 
scorn me and the man whom I loved whips me 
with foul insults and contempt. There is no 
example in history of such a betrayal, no paral- 
lel. I am finished. It is all over with me now 
—ali! I hope the end will come quickly,” and he 
moved away to the window, his tears falling 
heavily. 


CHAPTER XXVI 


In a day or two, however, the clouds lifted 
and the sun shone as brilliantly as ever. Oscar’s 
spirits could not be depressed for long: he took 
a child’s joy in living and in every incident of 
life. When I left him in Paris a week or so 
later, in midsummer, he was full of gaiety and 
humour, talking as delightfully as ever with a 
touch of cynicism that added piquancy to his 
wit. Shortly after I arrived in London he wrote 
saying he was ill, and that I really ought to 
send him some money. I had already paid him 
more than the amount we had agreed upon at 
first for his scenario, and I was hard up and 
anything but well. I had chronic bronchitis 
which prostrated me time and again that 
autumn. Having heard from mutual friends 
that Oscar’s illness did not hinder him from 
dining out and enjoying himself, I received his 
plaints and requests with a certain impatience, 
and replied to him curtly. His illness appeared 
to me to be merely a pretext. When my play 
was accepted his demands became as insistent 
as they were extravagant. 

Finally I went back to Paris in September to 


532 


OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 533 


see him, persuaded that I could settle everything 
amicably in five minutes’ talk: he must remem- 
ber our agreement. 

I found him well in health, but childishly an- 
noyed that my play was going to be produced 
and resolved to get all the money he could from 
me by hook or by crook. I never met such per- 
sistence in demands. I could only settle with him 
decently by paying him a further sum, which I did. 

In the course of this bargaining and begging 
I realised that contrary to my previous opinion 
he was not gifted as a friend, and did not attrib- 
ute any importance to friendship. His affection 
for Bosie Douglas even had given place to hatred: 
indeed his liking for him had never been founded 
on understanding or admiration; it was almost 
wholly snobbish: he loved the title, the romantic 
name—Lord Alfred Douglas. Robert Ross was 
the only friend of whom he always spoke with 
liking and appreciation: “One of the wittiest of 
men,” he used to call him and would jest at his 
handwriting, which was peculiarly bad, but al- 
ways good-naturedly; “‘a letter merely shows 
that Bobbie has something to conceal’; but he 
would add, “how kind he is, how good,” as if 
Ross’s devotion surprised him, as in fact it did. 
Ross has since told me that Oscar never cared 
much for him. Indeed Oscar cared so little for 
anyone that an unselfish affection astonished 


534. OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 


him beyond measure: he could find in himself 
no explanation of it. His vanity was always 
more active than his gratitude, as indeed it is 
with most of us. Now and then when Ross 
played mentor or took him to task, he became 
prickly at once and would retort: “Really, 
Bobbie, you ride the high horse so well, and so 
willingly, it seems a pity that you never tried 
Pegasus’’—not a sneer exactly, but a rap on the 
knuckles to call his monitor toorder. Like most 
men of charming manners, Oscar was selfish and 
self-centred, too convinced of his own impor- 
tance to spend much thought on others; yet 
generous to the needy and kind to all. 

After my return to London he kept on begging 
for money by almost every post. As soon as my 
play was advertised I found myself dunned and 
persecuted by a horde of people who declared 
that Oscar had sold them the scenario he after- 
wards sold to me.! Several of them threatened 
to get injunctions to prevent me staging my play, 
“Mr. and Mrs. Daventry,” if I did not first set- 
tle with them. Naturally, I wrote rather sharply 
to Oscar for having led me into this hornets’ nest. 

It was in the midst of all this unpleasantness 
that I heard from Turner, in October, I believe, 
that Oscar was seriously ill, and that if I owed 
him money, as he asserted, it would be a kind- 

1See Appendix: p. 589 and especially p. 592. 


OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 535 


ness to send it, as he was in great need. The 
letter found me in bed. I could not say now 
whether I answered it or not: it made me im- 
patient; his friends must have known that I 
owed Oscar nothing; but later I received a 
telegram from Ross saying that Oscar was not 
expected to live. I was ill and unable to move, or 
I should have gone at once to Paris. As it was I 
sent for my friend, Bell, gave him some money 
and a cheque, and begged him to go across and 
let me know if Oscar were really in danger, which 
I could hardly believe. As luck would have it, 
the next afternoon, when I hoped Bell had 
started, his wife came to tell me that he had had 
a severe asthmatic attack, but would cross as 
soon as he dared. 

I was too hard up myself to wire money that 
might not be needed, and Oscar had cried 
“wolf” about his health too often to be a credi- 
ble witness. Yet I was dissatisfied with myself 
and anxious for Bell to start. 

Day after day passed in troubled doubts and 
fears; but it was not long when a period was 
put to all my anxiety. A telegram came telling 
me he was dead. I could hardly believe my 
eyes: it seemed incredible—the fount of joy and 
gaiety; the delightful source of intellectual vi- 
vacity and interest stilled forever. The world 
went greyer to me because of Oscar Wilde’s death. 


536 OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS | 


Months afterwards Robert Ross gave me the 
particulars of his last illness. 

Ross went to Paris in October: as soon as he 
saw Oscar, he was shocked by the change in his 
appearance: he insisted on taking him to a doc- 
tor; but to his surprise the doctor saw no ground 
for immediate alarm: 1f Oscar would only stop 
drinking wine and a fortiori spirits, he might live 
for years: absinthe was absolutely forbidden. 
But Oscar paid no heed to the warning and Ross 
could only take him for drives whenever the 


weather permitted and seek to amuse him harm-_ 


lessly. 


The will to live had almost left Oscar: so long 
as he could live pleasantly and without effort he 
was content; but as soon as ill-health came, or 


pain, or even discomfort, he grew impatient for 
deliverance. 

But to the last he kept his joyous humour and 
charming gaiety. His disease brought with it a 
certain irrltation of the skin, annoying rather 
than painful. Meeting Ross one morning after 
a day’s separation he apologised for scratching 
himself: 

“Really,” he exclaimed, “I’m more like a great 
ape than ever; but I hope you’ll give mea lunch, 
Bobbie, and not a nut.” 

On one of the last drives with this friend he 
asked for champagne and when it was brought 


OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 537 


declared that he was dying as he had lived, 
“beyond his means”—his happy humour light- 
ing up even his last hours. 

Early in November Ross left Paris to go down 
to the Riviera with his mother: for Reggie Turner 
had undertaken to stay with Oscar. Reggie 
Turner describes how he grew gradually feebler 
and feebler, though to the end flashes of the old 
humour would astonish his attendants. He per- 
sisted in saying that Reggie, with his perpetual 
prohibitions, was qualifying for a doctor. “‘When 
you can refuse bread to the hungry, Reggie,” 
he would say, “and drink to the thirsty, you 
can apply for your diploma.” 

Towards the end of November Reggie wired 

for Ross and Ross left everything and reached 
_ Paris next day. 

When all was over he wrote to a friend giving 
him a very complete account of the last hours of 
Oscar Wilde; that account he generously allows 
me to reproduce and it will be found word for 
word in the Appendix; it is too long and too 
detailed to be used here. 

Ross’s letter should be read by the student; 
but several touches in it are too timid; certain 
experiences that should be put in high relief are 
slurred over: in conversation with me he told 
_ more and told it better. 

For example, when talking of his drives with 


538 OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 


Oscar, he mentions casually that Oscar “‘insisted 
on drinking absinthe,” and leaves it at that. 
The truth is that Oscar stopped the victoria at 
almost the first café, got down and had an 
absinthe. Two or three hundred yards further 
on, he stopped the carriage again to have another 
absinthe: at the next stoppage a few minutes 
later Ross ventured to remonstrate: 

You'll kill yourself, Oscar,” he cried, “you 
know the doctors said absinthe was poison to you!’ 

Oscar stopped on the sidewalk: 

**And what have I to live for, Bobbie?” he 
asked gravely. And Ross looking at him and 
noting the wreck—the symptoms of old age 
and broken health—could only bow his head 
and walk on with him in silence. What indeed 
had he to live for who had abandoned all the 
fair uses of life? 

The second scene is horrible: but is, so to 
speak, the inevitable resultant of the first, and 
has its own awful moral. Ross tells how he 
came one morning to QOscar’s death-bed and 
found him practically insensible: he describes 
the dreadful loud death-rattle of his breath, and 
says: “‘terrible offices had to be carried out.” 

The truth is still more appalling. Oscar had 
eaten too much and drunk too much almost hab- 
itually ever since the catastrophe in Naples. The 
dreadful disease from which he was suffering, or 


OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 539 


from the after effects of which he was suffering, 
weakens all the tissues of the body, and this 
weakness is aggravated by drinking wine and 
still more by drinking spirits. Suddenly, as the 
two friends sat by the bedside in sorrowful anx- 
iety, there was a loud explosion: mucus poured 
out of Oscar’s mouth and nose, and— 

Even the bedding had to be burned. 

If it is true that all those who draw the sword 
shall perish by the sword, it is no less certain 
that all those who live for the body shall perish 
by the body, and there is no death more de- 
grading. 


One more scene, and this the last, and I shall 
have done. 

When Robert Ross was arranging to bury 
Oscar at Bagneux he had already made up his 
mind as soon as he could to transfer his body 
to Pére Lachaise and erect over his remains 
some worthy memorial. It became the purpose 
of his life to pay his friend’s debts, annul his 
bankruptcy, and publish his books in suitable 
manner; in fine to clear Oscar’s memory from 
obloquy while leaving to his lovable spirit the 
shining raiment of immortality. In a few years 
he had accomplished all but one part of his high 
task. He had not only paid off all Oscar Wilde’s 


540 OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 


debts; but he had managed to remit thousands of 
pounds yearly to his children, and had estab- 
lished his popularity on the widest and surest 
foundation. 

He crossed to Paris with Oscar’s son, Vyvyan, 
to render the last service to his friend. When 
preparing the body for the grave years before 
Ross had taken medical advice as to what should 
be done to make his purpose possible. The doc- 
tors told him to put Wilde’s body in quicklime, 
like the body of the man in “The Ballad of 
Reading Gaol.” The quicklime, they said, 
would consume the flesh and leave the white 
bones—the skeleton—intact, which could then 
be moved easily. 

To his horror, when the grave was opened, — 
Ross found that the quicklime, instead of de- 
stroying the flesh, had preserved it. Oscar’s face 
was recognisable, only his hair and beard had 
grown long. At once Ross sent the son away, 
and when the sextons were about to use their 
shovels, he ordered them to desist, and descend- 
ing into the grave, moved the body with his own 
hands into the new coffin in loving reverence. — 

Those who hold our mortal vesture in respect — 
for the sake of the spirit will know how to thank — 
Robert Ross for the supreme devotion he showed ~ 
to his friend’s remains: in his case at least love © 
was stronger than death. 


OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 541 


One can be sure, too, that the man who won 
such fervid self-denying tenderness, had de- 
served it, called it forth by charm of companion- 

ship, or magic of loving intercourse. 


CHAPTER XXVII 


It was the inhumanity of the prison doctor 
and the English prison system that killed Oscar 
Wilde. ‘The sore place in his ear caused by the 
fall when he fainted that Sunday morning in 
Wandsworth Prison chapel formed into an ab- 
scess and was the final cause of his death. The 
“‘operation”’ Ross speaks of in his letter was the 
excision of this tumour. ‘The imprisonment and 
starvation, and above all the cruelty of his 
gaolers, had done their work. 

The local malady was inflamed, as I have al- 
ready said, by a more general and more terrible 
disease. The doctors attributed the red flush 
Oscar complained of on his chest and back, 
which he declared was due to eating mussels, to 
another and graver cause. They warned him 
at once to stop drinking and smoking and to 
live with the greatest abstemiousness, for they 
recognised in him the tertiary symptoms of that 
dreadful disease which the brainless prudery in 
England allows to decimate the flower of English 
manhood unchecked. 

Oscar took no heed of their advice. He had 
little to live for. The pleasures of eating and 


542 


PEE TO 


OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 543 


drinking in good company were almost the only 
pleasures left to him. Why should he deny him- 
self the immediate enjoyment for a very vague 
and questionable future benefit? 

He never believed in any form of asceticism 
or self-denial, and towards the end, feeling that 
life had nothing more to offer him, the pagan 
spirit in him refused to prolong an existence that 
was no longer joyous. “I have lived,” he would 
have said with profound truth. 

Much has been made of the fact that Oscar 
was buried in an out-of-the-way cemetery at 
Bagneux under depressing circumstances. It 
rained the day of the funeral, it appears, and a 
cold wind blew: the way was muddy and long, 
and only a half-a-dozen friends accompanied the 
coffin to its resting-place. But after all, such 
accidents, depressing as they are at the moment, 
are unimportant. The dead clay knows nothing 
of our feelings, and whether it is borne to the 
grave in pompous procession and laid to rest in 
a great abbey amid the mourning of a nation or 
tossed as dust to the wind, is a matter of utter 
indifference. 

Heine’s verse holds the supreme consolation: 


Immerhin mich wird umgeben 
Gotteshimmel dort wie hier 

Und wie Todtenlampen schweben 
Nachts die Sterne ueber mir. 


544. OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 


Oscar Wilde’s work was over, his gift to the 
world completed years before. Even the friends 
who loved him and delighted in the charm of his 


talk, in his light-hearted gaiety and humour, 


would scarcely have kept him longer in the 
pillory, exposed to the loathing and contempt 
of this all-hating world. 

The good he did lives after him, and is im- 
mortal, the evil is buried in his grave. Who 
would deny to-day that he was a quickening 
and liberating influence? If his life was given 
overmuch to self-indulgence, it must be remem- 
bered that his writings and conversation were 
singularly kindly, singularly amiable, singularly 
pure. No harsh or coarse or bitter word ever 


passed those eloquent laughing lips. If he © 


served beauty in her myriad forms, he only 
showed in his works the beauty that was amiable 
and of good report. If only half-a-dozen men 
mourned for him, their sorrow was unaffected 
and intense, and perhaps the greatest of men 
have not found in their lifetime even half-a- 
dozen devoted admirers and lovers. It is well 
with our friend, we say: at any rate, he was not 
forced to drink the bitter lees of a suffering and 
dishonourable old age: Death was merciful to 
him. 

My task is finished. I don’t think anyone will 


ing pret 


OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 545 


doubt that I have done it in a reverent spirit, 
telling the truth as I see it, from the beginning 
to the end, and hiding or omitting as little as 
might be of what ought to be told.. Yet when I 
come-to the parting I am painfully conscious 
that I have not done Oscar Wilde justice; that 
some fault or other in me has led me to dwell 
too much on his faults and failings and grudged 
praise to his soul-subduing charm and the 
incomparable sweetness and gaiety of his na- 
ture. 

Let me now make amends. When to the ses- 
sions of sad memory I summon up the spirits 
of those whom I have met in the world and 
loved, men famous and men of unfulfilled re- 
nown, I miss no one so much as I miss Oscar 
Wilde. I would rather spend an evening with 
him than with Renan or Carlyle, or Verlaine or 
Dick Burton or Davidson. I would rather 
have him back now than almost anyone I have 
ever met. I have known more heroic souls and 
some deeper souls; souls much more keenly 
alive to ideas of duty and generosity; but I have 
known no more charming, no more quickening, 
no more delightful spirit. 

This may be my shortcoming; it may be that 
I prize humour and good-humour and eloquent 
or poetic speech, the artist qualities, more than 


546 OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 


goodness or loyalty or manliness, and so over- 
estimate things amiable. But the lovable and 
joyous things are to me the priceless things, and 
the most charming man I have ever met was as- 
suredly Oscar Wiide. I do not believe that in 
all the realms of death there is a more fascinat- 
ing or delightful companion. 

One last word on Oscar Wilde’s place in Eng- 
lish literature. In the course of this narrative 
I have indicated sufficiently, I think, the value 
and importance of his work; he will live with 
Congreve and with Sheridan as the wittiest 
and most humorous of all our playwrights. 
“The Importance of Being Earnest” has its 
own place among the best of English comedies. 
But Oscar Wilde has done better work than 
Congreve or Sheridan: he is a master not only 
of the smiles, but of the tears of men. ‘The 
Ballad of Reading Gaol” is the best ballad in 
English; it is more, it is the noblest utterance 
that has yet reached us from a modern prison, the 
only high utterance indeed that has ever come 
from that underworld of man’s hatred and man’s 
inhumanity. In it, and by the spirit of Jesus 
which breathes through it, Oscar Wilde has done 
much, not only to reform English prisons, but to 
abolish them altogether, for they are as degrad- 
ing to the intelligence as they are harmful to the 
soul. What gaoler and what gaol could do any- 


OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 547 


thing but evil to the author of such a verse as 
this: 
This too I know—and wise it were 
If each could know the same— 
That every prison that men build 
Is built with bricks of shame, 
And bound with bars, lest Christ should see 
How men their brothers maim. 


| Indeed, is it not clear that the man who, in 


his own wretchedness, wrote that letter to the 
warder which I have reproduced, and was eager 
to bring about the freeing of the little children 
at his own cost, is far above the judge who con- 
demned him or the society which sanctions such 
punishments? “The Ballad of Reading Gaol,” 
I repeat, and some pages of “‘De Profundis,” 
and, above all, the tragic fate of which these 
were the outcome, render Oscar Wilde more in- 
teresting to men than any of his peers. 

He has been indeed well served by the malice 
and cruelty of his enemies; in this sense his word 
in ‘De Profundis” that he stood in symbolic re- 
lation to the art and life of his time is justified. 

The English drove Byron and Shelley and 
Keats into exile and allowed Chatterton, David- 
son and Middleton to die of misery and destitu- 
tion; but they treated none of their artists and 
seers with the malevolent cruelty they showed to 
Oscar Wilde. His fate in England is symbolic 


548 OSCAR WILDE AND HIS CONFESSIONS 


of the fate of all artists; in some degree they 


will all be punished as he was punished by a 


grossly materialised people who prefer to go in 


blinkers and accept idiotic conventions because _ 


they distrust the intellect and have no taste for 
mental virtues. | 
All English artists will be judged by their 
inferiors and condemned, as Dante’s master 
was condemned, for their good deeds (per tuo 
ben far): for it must not be thought that Oscar 
Wilde was punished solely or even chiefly for the 
evil he wrought: he was punished for his popu- 
larity and his preéminence, for the superiority of 
his mind and wit; he was punished by the envy 
of journalists, and by the malignant pedantry of 
half-civilised judges. Envy in his case over- 
leaped itself: the hate of his justicers was so 
diabolic that they have given him to the pity of 
mankind forever; they it is who have made him 
eternally interesting to humanity, a tragic figure 
of imperishable renown. 


THe Enp. 


APPENDIX 


HERE are the two poems of Lord Alfred Douglas which 
were read out in Court, on account of which the prosecu- 
tion sought to incriminate Oscar Wilde. My readers can 
judge for themselves the value of any inference to be 
drawn from such work by another hand. To me, I must 
confess, the poems themselves seem harmless and pretty 
—I had almost said, academic and unimportant. 


TWO LOVES 
To “THE SPHINX”’ 


Two loves I have of comfort and despair 

That like two spirits do suggest me still, 

My better angel is a man right fair, 

My worse a woman tempting me to ill.— Shakespeare. 


IT pREAMED I stood upon a little hill, 

And at my feet there lay a ground, that seemed 

Like a waste garden, flowering at its will 

With flowers and blossoms. There were pools that dreamed 
Black and unruffled; there were white lilies 

A few, and crocuses, and violets 

Purple or pale, snake-like fritillaries 

Scaree seen for the rank grass, and through green nets 
Blue eyes of shy pervenche winked in the sun. 

And there were curious flowers, before unknown, 

Flowers that were stained with moonlight, or with shades 
Of Nature’s wilful moods; and here a one 

That had drunk in the transitory tone 

Of one brief moment in a sunset; blades 

Of grass that in an hundred springs had been 

Slowly but exquisitely nurtured by the stars, 

And watered with the scented dew long cupped 

In lilies, that for rays of sun had seen 

Only God’s glory, for never a sunrise mars 


549 


550 APPENDIX 


The luminous air of heaven. Beyond, abrupt, 

A gray stone wall, o’ergrown with-velvet moss 
Uprose. And gazing I stood long, all mazed 

To see a place so strange, so sweet, so fair. 

And as I stood and marvelled, lo! across 

The garden came a youth, one hand he raised 

To shield him from the sun, his wind-tossed hair 
Was twined with flowers, and in his hand he bore 

A purple bunch of bursting grapes, his eyes 

Were clear as crystal, naked all was he, 

White as the snow on pathless mountains frore, 

Red were his lips as red wine-spilth that dyes 

A marble floor, his brow chalcedony. 

And he came near me, with his lips uncurled 

And kind, and caught my hand and kissed my mouth, 
And gave me grapes to eat, and said, ‘“‘Sweet friend, 
Come, I will show thee shadows of the world 

And images of life. See, from the south 

Comes the pale pageant that hath never an end.” 
And lo! within the garden of my dream 

I saw two walking on a shining plain 

Of golden light. The one did joyous seem 

And fair and blooming, and a sweet refrain 

Came from his lips; he sang of pretty maids 

And joyous love of comely girl and boy; 

His eyes were bright, and ’mid the dancing blades 
Of golden grass his feet did trip for joy. 

And in his hands he held an ivory lute, 

With strings of gold that were as maidens’ hair, 
And sang with voice as tuneful as a flute, 

And round his neck three chains of roses were. 

But he that was his comrade walked aside; 

He was full sad and sweet, and his large eyes 

Were strange with wondrous brightness, staring wide 
With gazing; and he sighed with many sighs 

That moved me, and his cheeks were wan and white 
Like pallid lilies, and his lips were red 

Like poppies, and his hands he clenched tight, 

And yet again unclenched, and his head 

Was wreathed with moon-flowers pale as lips of death. 


APPENDIX 551 


A purple robe he wore, o’erwrought in gold 

With the device of a great snake, whose breath 

Was fiery flame: which when I did behold 

I fell a-weeping and I cried, ‘‘Sweet youth 

Tell me why, sad and sighing, thou dost rove 

These pleasant realms? I pray thee speak me sooth 
What is thy name?” He said, ‘‘My name is Love.” 
Then straight the first did turn himself to me 

And cried, ‘‘ He lieth, for his name is Shame, 

But I am Love, and I was wont to be 

Alone in this fair garden, till he came 

Unasked by night; I am true Love, I fill 

The hearts of boy and girl with mutual flame.” 
Then sighing said the other, ‘‘ Have thy will, 

I am the Love that dare not speak its name.” 


Lorp ALFRED DOUGLAS. 
September, 1892. 


IN PRAISE OF SHAME 


Unto my bed last night, methought there came 
Our lady of strange dreams, and from an urn 
She poured live fire, so that mine eyes did burn 
At sight of it. Anon the floating flame 

Took many shapes, and one cried, ‘“‘I am Shame 
That walks with Love, I am most wise to turn 
Cold lips and limbs to fire; therefore discern 
And see my loveliness, and praise my name.” 


And afterward, in radiant garments dressed, 

With sound of flutes and laughing of glad lips, 

A pomp of all the passions passed along, 

All the night through; till the white phantom ships 
Of dawn sailed in. Whereat I said this song, 

“Of all sweet passions Shame is loveliest.” 


Lorp ALFRED DOUGLAS. 


THE UNPUBLISHED PORTION OF “DE 
PROFUNDIS” 


Tuts is not the whole of the unpublished portion of 
“De Profundis”; but that part only which was read out in 
Court and used for the purpose of discrediting Lord Alfred 
Douglas; still, it is more than half of the whole in length 
and absolutely more than the whole in importance: noth- 
ing of any moment is omitted, except the reiteration of 
accusations and just this repetition weakens the effect of 
the argument and strengthens the impression of querulous 
nagging instead of dispassionate statement. If the whole 
were printed Oscar Wilde would stand worse; somewhat 
more selfish and more vindictive. 


I have commented the document as it stands mainly 


for the sake of clearness and because it justifies in every 
particular and almost in every epithet the shadows of the 
portrait which I have endeavoured to paint in this book. 
Curiously enough Oscar Wilde depicts himself uncon- 
sciously in this part of ‘‘De Profundis” in a more unfa- 
vourable light than that accorded him in my memory. I 
believe mine is the more faithful portrait of him, but that 
is for my readers to determine. 
FRANK Harris. 

New York, December, rgr5. 


H.M. Prison, 


Dear Bostz, Reading. 


After long and fruitless waiting I have determined to 
write to you myself, as much for your sake as for mine, as 
I would not like to think that I had passed through two 
long years of imprisonment without ever having received 
a single line from you, or any news or message even, ex- 
cept such as gave me pain. 

Our ill-fated and most lamentable friendship has ended 
in ruin and public infamy for me, yet the memory of our 


552 


SxS 


APPENDIX So% 


ancient affection is often with me, and the thought that 
loathing, bitterness and contempt should for ever take 
the place in my heart once held by love is very sad to me; 
and you yourself will, I think, feel in your heart that to 
write to me as I lie in the loneliness of prison life is better 
than to publish my letters without my permission, or to 
dedicate poems to me unasked, though the world will 
know nothing of whatever words of grief or passion, of 
remorse or indifference, you may choose to send as your 
answer or your appeal. 

I have no doubt that in this letter which I have to write 
of your life and mine, of the past and of the future, of 
sweet things changed to bitterness and of bitter things 
that may be turned to joy, there will be much that will 
wound your vanity to the quick. If it prove so, read the 
letter over and over again till it kills your vanity. If you 
find in it something of which you feel that you are un- 
justly accused, remember that one should be thankful 
that there is any fault of which one can be unjustly ac- 
cused. If there be in it one single passage that brings 
tears to your eyes, weep as we weep in prison, where the 
day no less than the night is set apart for tears. It is the 
only thing that can save you. If you go complaining to 
_ your mother, as you did with reference to the scorn of you 
I displayed in my letter to Robbie, so that she may flatter 
and soothe you back into self-complacency or conceit, you 
will be completely lost. If you find one false excuse for 
yourself you will soon find a hundred, and be just what 
you were before. Do you still say, as you said to Robbie 
in your answer, that I ‘attribute unworthy motives” to 
your Ah! you had no motives in life. You had appe- 
tites merely. A motive is an intellectual aim. That you 
were ‘‘very young’’ when our friendship began? Your 
defect was not that you knew so little about life, but that 
you knew so much. The morning dawn of boyhood with 
its delicate bloom, its clear pure light, its joy of innocence 
and expectation, you had left far behind you. With very 
swift and running feet you had passed from Romance to 
Realism. The gutter and the things that live in it had 
begun to fascinate) you. That was the origin of the 


554 APPENDIX 


trouble! in which you sought my aid, and I, unwisely ac- 
cording to the wisdom of this world, out of pity and kind- 
ness, gave it to you. You must read this letter right 
through, though each word may become to you as the fire 
or knife of the surgeon that makes the delicate flesh burn 
or bleed. Remember that the fool to the eyes of the gods 
and the fool to the eyes of man are very different. One 
who is entirely ignorant” of the modes of Art in its reve- 
lation or the moods of thought in its progress, of the pomp 
of the Latin line or the richer music of the vowelled Greek, 
of Tuscan sculpture or Elizabethan song, may yet be full 
of the very sweetest wisdom. The real fool, such as the 
gods mock or mar, is he who does not know himself. I 
was such a one too long. You have been such a one too 
long. Beso no more. Do not be afraid. The supreme 
vice is shallowness. Everything that is realised is right. 
Remember also that whatever is misery to you to read,. 
is still greater misery to me to set down. They have per- 
mitted you to see the strange and tragic shapes of life as 
one sees shadows in a crystal. The head of Medusa that 
turns living men to stone, you have been allowed to look 
at in a mirror merely. You yourself have walked free 
among the flowers. From me the beautiful world of — 
colour and motion has been taken away. 

I will begin by telling you that I blame myself terribly. 
As I sit in this dark cell in convict clothes, a disgraced and 
ruined man, I blame myself. In the perturbed and fitful 
nights of anguish, in the long monotonous days of pain, it 
is myself I blame. I blame myself for allowing an in- 
tellectual friendship, a friendship whose primary aim was 
not the creation and contemplation of beautiful things, 
entirely to dominate my life. From the very first there 
was too wide a gap between us. You had been idle at 
your school, worse than idle* at your university. You did 
not realise that an artist, and especially such an artist as I 


1QOscar told me this story; but as it only concerns Lord Alfred Douglas, and 
throws no new light on Oscar’s character, I don’t use it. 

2 This is extravagant condemnation of Lord Alfred Douglas’ want of education; 
for he certainly knew a great deal about the poetic art even then and he has since 
acquired a very considerable knowledge of ‘‘ Elizabethan Song.” 

3. Whoever wishes to understand this bitter allusion should read his father’s letter 
to Lord Alfred Douglas transcribed in the first volume. The Marquis of Queens- 
berry doesn’t hesitate to hint why his son was ‘‘sent down"’ from Oxford. 


APPENDIX Boe 


am, one, that is to say, the quality of whose work depends 
on the intensification of personality, requires an intellec- 
tual atmosphere, quiet, peace, and solitude. You ad- 
mired my work when it was finished: you enjoyed the 
brilliant successes of my first nights, and the brilliant 
banquets that followed them: you were proud, and quite 
naturally so, of being the intimate friend of an artist so 
distinguished: but you could not understand the condi- 
tions requisite for the production of artistic work. I am 
not speaking in phrases of rhetorical exaggeration, but 
in terms of absolute truth to actual fact when I remind 
you that during the whole time we were together I never 
wrote one single line. Whether at Torquay, Goring, Lon- 
don, Florence, or elsewhere, my life, as long as you were 
by my side, was entirely sterile and uncreative. And with 
but few intervals, you were, I regret to say, by my side 
always. 

I remember, for instance, in September, ’93, to select 
merely one instance out of many, taking a set of chambers, 
purely in order to work undisturbed, as I had broken my 
contract with John Hare, for whom I had promised to 
write a play, and who was pressing me on the subject. 
During the first week you kept away. We had, not un- 
naturally indeed, differed on the question of the artistic 
value! of your translation of Salomé. So you contented 
yourself with sending me foolish letters on the subject. 
In that week I wrote and completed in every detail, as 
it was ultimately performed, the first act of an An Ideal 
Husband. ‘The second week you returned, and my work 
practically had to be given up. I arrived at St. James’s 
Place every morning at 11.30 in order to have the oppor- 
tunity of thinking and writing without the interruption 
inseparable from my own household, quiet and peaceful 
as that household was. But the attempt was vain. At 
12 o’clock you drove up and stayed smoking cigarettes 
and chattering till 1.30, when I had to take you out to 
luncheon at the Café Royal or the Berkeley. Luncheon 
with its liqueurs lasted usually till 3.30. For an hour you 
retired to White’s. At tea time you appeared again and 


1Cfr. Appendix: ‘Criticisms by Robert Ross.’’ 


556 APPENDIX 


stayed till it was time to dress for dinner. You dined 


| Se te eee one 


with me either at the Savoy or at Tite Street. We did — 


not separate as a rule till after midnight, as supper at 


; 


Willis’ had to wind up the entrancing day. That was my 
life for those three months, every single day, except during — 


the four days when you went abroad. I then, of course, 


had to go over to Calais to fetch you back. For one of my ‘ 
nature and temperament it was a position at once gro- — 


tesque and tragic. 


You surely must realise that now. You must see now 


that your incapacity of being alone: your nature so exi- 
gent in its persistent claim on the attention and time of 
others: your lack of any power of sustained intellectual 
concentration: the unfortunate accident—for I like to 


think it was no more—that you had not been able to — 


acquire the “Oxford temper” in intellectual matters, 
never, I mean, been one who could play gracefully with 
ideas, but had arrived at violence of opinion merely— 


that all these things, combined with the fact that your — 
desires and your interests were in Life, not in Art, were — 


as destructive to your own progress in culture as they were 
to my work as an artist. When I compare my friendship 


with you to my friendship with still younger men, as John 


Gray and Pierre Louys, I feel ashamed. My real life, my 
higher life, was with them and such as they. 


Of the appalling results of my friendship with you I 


don’t speak at present. I am thinking merely of its qual- 


ity while it lasted. It was intellectually degrading to me. — 
You had the rudiments! of an artistic temperament in its ~ 
germ. But I met you either too late or too soon. I don’t © 


know which. When you were away I was all right. The — 


moment, in the early December of the year to which I ~ 
have been alluding, I had succeeded in inducing your — 
mother to send you out of England, I collected again the — 
torn and ravelled web of my imagination, got my life back — 
into my own hands, and not merely finished the three re- — 
maining acts of the Ideal Husband, but conceived and had ~ 
almost completed two other plays of a completely different — 


1 Oscar is not flattering his friend in this: Lord Alfred Douglas has written two or 
three sonnets which rank among the best in the language. 


\ 
SE EL ee eee Nga eee 


APPENDIX 557 


type, the Florentine Tragedy and La Sainte Courtesane, 
when suddenly, unbidden, unwelcome, and under circum- 
stances fatal to my happiness, you returned. The two 
works left then imperfect I was unable to take up again. 
_ The mood that created them I could never recover. You 
now, having yourself published a volume of verse, will be 
able to recognise the truth of everything I have said here. 
Whether you can or not it remains as a hideous truth in 
the very heart of our friendship. While you were with me 
you were the absolute ruin of my art, and in allowing you 
to stand persistently between Art and myself, I give to 
myself shame and blame in the fullest degree. You couldn’t 
appreciate, you couldn’t know, you couldn’t understand. 
I had no right to expect it of you at all. Your interests 
were merely in your meals and moods. Your desires were 
simply for amusements, for ordinary or less ordinary 
pleasures. They were what your temperament needed, or 
thought it needed for the moment. I should have for- 
bidden you my house and my chambers except when I 
specially invited you. I blame myself without reserve for 
my weakness. It was merely weakness. One half-hour 
with Art was always more to me than a cycle with you. 
Nothing really at any period of my life was ever of the 
smallest importance! to me compared with Art. But in the 
case of an artist, weakness is nothing less than a crime 
when it is a weakness that paralyses the imagination. 

I blame myself for having allowed you to bring me to 
utter and discreditable financial ruin. I remember one 
morning in the early October of ’92, sitting in the yellow- 
ing woods at Bracknell with your mother. At that time 
I knew very little of your real nature. I had stayed from 
a Saturday to Monday with you at Oxford. You had 
stayed with me at Cromer for ten days and played golf. 
The conversation turned on you, and your mother began 
to speak to me about your character. She told me of 
your two chief faults, your vanity, and your being, as she 
termed it, ‘‘all wrong about money.”’ I have a distinct 
recollection of how I laughed. I had no idea that the first 
would bring me to prison and the second to bankruptcy. 


1 This statement—more than half true—is Oscar Wilde’s A pologia and justification. 


558 APPENDIX 


I thought vanity a sort of graceful flower for a young man 
to wear, as for extravagance—the virtues of prudence and — 
thrift were not in my own nature or my own race. But 
before our friendship was one month older I began to see 
what your mother really meant. Your insistence on a life 
of reckless profusion: your incessant demands for money; 
your claim that all your pleasures should be paid for by 
me, whether I was with you or not, brought me, after some 
time, into serious monetary difficulties, and what made 
the extravagance to me, at any rate, so monotonously 
uninteresting, as your persistent grasp on my life grew 
stronger and stronger, was that the money was spent on 
little more than the pleasures of eating, drinking and the 
like. Now and then it is a joy to have one’s table red with 
Wine and roses, but you outstripped all taste and temper- 
ance. You demanded without grace and received with- 
out thanks. You grew to think that you had a sort of 
right to live at my expense, and in a profuse luxury to 
which you had never been accustomed, and which, for 
that reason, made your appetites all the more keen, and 
at the end, if you lost money gambling in some Algiers 
Casino, you simply telegraphed next morning to me in 
London to lodge the amount of your losses to your account 
at your bank, and gave the matter no further thought of 
any kind. 

When I tell you that between the autumn of 1892 and 
the date of my imprisonment, I spent with you and on 
you, more than £5,000 in actual money, irrespective of the 
bills I incurred, you will have some idea of the sort of life 
on which you insisted. Do you think I exaggerate? My 
ordinary expenses with you for an ordinary day in London 
—for luncheon, dinner, supper, amusements, hansoms, and 
the rest of it—ranged from £12 to £20, and the week’s 
expenses were naturally in proportion and ranged from 
£80 to £130. For our three months at Goring my expenses 
(rent, of course, included) were £1,340. Step by step 
with the Bankruptcy Receiver I had to go over every item 
of my life. It was horrible. ‘‘Plain living and high 
thinking,” was, of course, an ideal you could not at that 
time have appreciated, but such an extravagance was a 


APPENDIX 559 


disgrace to both of us. One of the most delightful dinners 
I remember ever having had is one Robbie and I had to- 
gether in a little Soho Café, which cost about as many 
shillings as my dinners to you used to cost pounds. Out 
of my dinner with Robbie came the first and best of all my 
dialogues. Idea, title, treatment, mode, everything was 
struck out at a 3 franc soc. table d’héte. Out of the reck- 
less dinners with you nothing remains but the memory 
that too much was eaten and too much was drunk. And 
my yielding to your demands was bad for you. You know 
that now. It made you grasping often: at times not a 
little unscrupulous: ungracious always. ‘There was, on 
far too many occasions, too little joy or privilege in being 
your host. You forgot—lI will not say the formal courtesy 
of thanks, for formal courtesies will strain a close friend- 
ship—but simply the grace of sweet companionship, the 
charm of pleasant conversation, and all those gentle hu- 
manities that make life lovely, and are an accompaniment 
to life as music might be, keeping things in tune and filling 
with melody the harsh or silent places. And though it 
may seem strange to you that one in the terrible position 
in which I am situated, should find a difference between 
one disgrace and another, still I frankly admit that the 
folly of throwing away all this money on you, and letting 
- you squander my fortune to your own hurt as well as to 
mine, gives to me and in my eyes a note of common prof- 
ligacy to my bankruptcy that makes me doubly ashamed 
of it. I was made for other things. 

But most of all I blame myself for the entire ethical 
degradation I allowed you to bring on me. The basis of 
character is will power, and my will power became abso- 
lutely subject? to yours. It sounds a grotesque thing to 
say, but it is none the less true. Those incessant scenes 
that seemed to be almost physically necessary to you, and 
in which your mind and body grew distorted, and you 
became a thing as terrible to look at as to listen to: that 
dreadful mania you inherit from your father, the mania 
for writing revolting and loathsome letters: your entire 
lack of any control over your emotions as displayed in 

1 This is, I believe, true and the explanation that follows is probably true also. 


560 APPENDIX 


your long resentful moods of sullen silence, no less than 
in the sudden fits of almost epileptic rage: all these things 
in:reference to which one of my letters to you, left by you 
lying about in the Savoy or some other hotel, and so pro- 
duced in court by your father’s counsel, contained an 
entreaty not devoid of pathos, had you at that time been 
able to recognise pathos either in its elements or its ex- 
pression—these, I say, were the origin and causes of my 
fatal%yielding to you in your daily increasing demands. 
You wore me out. It was the triumph of the smaller over 
the bigger nature. It was the case of that tyranny of the 
weak over the strong which somewhere in one of my plays 
I describe as being ‘‘the only tyranny that lasts.” And 


it was inevitable. In every relation of life with others one . 


has to find some moyen de vivre. 

I had always thought that my giving up to you in small 
things meant nothing: that when a great moment arrived 
I could myself re-assert my will power in its natural su- 
periority. It was not so. At the great moment my will 
power completely failed me. In life there is really no 
great or small thing. All things are of equal value and 
of equal size. My habit—due to indifference chiefly at 


first—of giving up to you in everything had become in-— 


sensibly a real part of my nature. Without my knowing 
it, it had stereotyped my temperament to one permanent 
and fatal mood. That is why, in the subtle epilogue to 
the first edition of his essays, Pater says that ‘‘ Failure is 
to form habits.”” When he said it the dull Oxford people 
thought the phrase a mere wilful inversion of the some- 
what wearisome text of Aristotelian Ethics, but there is a 
wonderful, a terrible truth hidden init. I had allowed you 
to sap my strength of character, and to me the formation 
of a habit had proved to be not failure merely, but ruin. 
Ethically you had been even still more destructive to me 
than you had been artistically. 

The warrant once granted, your will, of course, directed 
everything. At a time when I should have been in Lon- 
don taking wise counsel and calmly considering the hide- 
ous trap in which I had allowed myself to be caught—the 
booby trap, as your father calls it to the present day— 


ae ee eee: 


APPENDIX 561 


you insisted on my taking you to Monte Carlo, of all re- 
volting places on God’s earth, that all day and all night 
as well, you might gamble as long as the casino remained 
open. As for me—baccarat! having no charms for me—I 
was left alone outside by myself. You refused to discuss 
even for five minutes the position to which you and your 
father had brought me. My business was merely to pay 
your hotel expenses and your losses. The slightest allu- 
sion to the ordeal awaiting me was regarded as a bore. A 
new brand of champagne that was recommended to us 
had more interest for you. On our return to London those 
of my friends who really desired my welfare implored me 
to retire abroad, and not to face an impossible trial. You 
imputed mean motives to them for giving such advice and 
cowardice to me for listening to it. You forced me to 
stay to brazen it out, if possible, in the box by absurd and 
silly perjuries. At the end, of course, I was arrested, and 
your father became the hero of the hour. 

As far as I can make out, I ended my friendship with 
you every three months regularly. And each time that 
I did so you managed by means of entreaties, telegrams, 
letters, tlie interposition of your friends, the interposition 
of mine, and the like to induce me to allow you back. 

But the froth and folly of our life grew often very weari- 
some to me: it was only in the mire that we met: and fas- 
cinating, terribly fascinating though the one? topic round 
which your talk invariably centered was, still at the end 
it became quite monotonous to me. I was often bored to 
death by it, and accepted it as I accepted your passion 
for music halls, or your mania for absurd extravagance in 
eating and drinking, or any other of your to me less at- 
tractive characteristics, as a thing that is to say, that one 
simply had to put up with, a part of the high price one had 
to pay for knowing you. 

When you came one Monday evening to my rooms, ac- 
companied by two?’ of your friends, I found myself actually 
flying abroad next morning to escape from you, giving my 

1 Baccarat is not played in the Casino: roulette and trente et quarante are the games: 
roulette was Lord Alfred Douglas’ favourite. 


2 This is a confession almost as much as an accusation, 
3 Oscar here crosses the t’s and dots the z’s of his charge. 


562 APPENDIX 


family some absurd reason for my sudden departure, and 
leaving a false address with my servant for fear you might 
follow me by the next train. .... 

Our friendship had always been a source of distress to 
my wife: not merely because she had never liked you 
personally, but because she saw how your continual com- 
panionship altered me, and not for the better. 

You started without delay for Paris, sending me passion- 
ate telegrams on the road to beg me to see you once, at 
any rate. I declined. You arrived in Paris late on a 
Saturday night and found a brief letter from me waiting 
for you at your hotel stating that I would not see you. 
Next morning I received in Tite Street a telegram of some 
ten or eleven pages in length from you. You stated in it 
that no matter what you had done to me you could not 
believe that I would absolutely decline to see you; you 
reminded me that for the sake of seeing me even for one 
hour you had travelled six days and six nights across 
Europe without stopping once on the way; you made what 
I must admit was a most pathetic appeal, and ended with 
what seemed to me a threat of suicide and one not thinly 
veiled. You had yourself often told me how many of your 
race there had been who had stained their hands in their 
own blood: your uncle certainly, your grandfather possibly; 
many others in the mad bad line from which you come. 
Pity, my old affection for you, regard for your mother, to 
whom your death under such dreadful circumstances would 
have been a blow almost too great for her to bear, the 
horror of the idea that so young a life, and one that 
amidst all its ugly faults had still promise of beauty in it, 
should come to so revolting an end, mere humanity itself 
—all these, if excuses be necessary, must serve as an ex- 
cuse for consenting to accord you one last interview. 
When I arrived in Paris, your tears breaking out again 
and again all through the evening, and falling over your 
cheeks like rain as we sat at dinner first at Voisin’s, at 
supper at Paillard’s afterwards, the unfeigned joy you 
evinced at seeing me, holding my hand whenever you 
could, as though you were a gentle and penitent child; 
your contrition, so simple and sincere at the moment made 


APPENDIX 563 


me consent to renew our friendship. Two days after we 
had returned to London, your father saw you having 
luncheon with me at the Café Royal, joined my table, 
drank of my wine, and that afternoon, through a letter ad- 
dressed to you, began his first attack on me. . . . It may 
be strange, but I had once again, I will not say the chance, 
but the duty, of separating from you forced on me. I 
need hardly remind you that I refer to your conduct to 
me at Brighton from October roth to 13th, 1894. Three 
years is a long time for you to go back. But we who live 
in prison, and in whose lives there is no event but sorrow, 
have to measure time by throbs of pain, and the record of 
bitter moments. We have nothing else to think of. Suf- 
fering, curious as it may sound to you, is the means by 
which we exist, because it is the only means by which we 
become conscious of existing; and the remembrance of 
suffering in the past is necessary to us as the warrant, the 
evidence, of our continued identity. Between myself and 
the memory of joy lies a gulf no less deep than that be- 
tween myself and joy in its actuality. Had our life to- 
gether been as the world fancied it to be, one simply of 
pleasure, profligacies and laughter, I would not be able to 
recall a single passage in it. It is because it was full of 
moments and days tragic, bitter, sinister in their warnings, 
dull or dreadful in their monotonous scenes and unseemly 
violences, that I can see or hear each separate incident in 
its detail, can indeed see or hear little else. So much in 
this place do men live by pain that my friendship with 
you, in the way through which I am forced to remember 
it, appears to me always as a prelude consonant with those 
varying modes of anguish which each day I have to realise, 
nay more, to necessitate them even; as though my life, 
whatever it had seemed to myself and others, had all the 
while been a real symphony of sorrow, passing through its 
rhythmically linked movements to its certain resolution, 
with that inevitableness that in Art characterises the 
treatment of every great theme. . . . . I spoke of your 
conduct to me on three successive days three years ago, 
did I not? 

I entertained you, of course, I had no option in the 


564 | APPENDIX 


matter; but elsewhere, and not in my own home. The 
next day, Monday, your companion returned to the duties! 
of his profession, and you stayed with me. Bored with 
Worthing, and still more, I have no doubt, with my fruit- 
less efforts to concentrate my attention on my play, the 
only thing that really interested me at the moment, you 
insist on being taken to the Grand Hotel at Brighton. 


The night we arrive you fall ill with that dreadful low — 


fever that is foolishly called the influenza, your second, 
if not your third, attack. I need not remind you how I 
waited on you, and tended you, not merely with every 
luxury of fruit, flowers, presents, books and the like that 


money can procure, but with that affection, tenderness — 


and love that, whatever you may think, is not to be pro- 
cured for money. Except for an hour’s walk in the morn- 
ing, an hour’s drive in the afternoon, I never left the hotel. 
I got special grapes from London for you as you did not 
care for those the hotel supplied; invented things to please 
you; remained either with you or in the room next to yours; 
sat with you every evening to quiet or amuse you. 

After four or five days you recover, and I take lodgings 
in order to try and finish my play. You, of course, accom- 
pany me. The morning after the day on which we were 
installed I feel extremely ill. 

The doctor finds I have caught the influenza from you. 

There is no manservant to wait on me, not even any 
one to send out on a message, or to get what the doctor 
orders. But you are there. I feel no alarm. The next 
two days you leave me entirely alone without care, with- 


out attendance, without anything. It was not a question — 


of grapes, flowers and charming gifts: it was a question of 
mere necessities. 

And when I was left all day without anything to read, 
you calmly tell me that you bought the book I wanted, 
and that they had promised to send it down, a statement 
which I found by chance afterwards to have been entirely 
untrue, from beginning to end. All the while you are, of 
course, living at my expense, driving about, dining at the 
Grand Hotel, and indeed only appearing in my room for 


1 The previous accusation repeated, with bitterest sarcasm. 


a a ee 


nares = she Pay tee sys eee 
Pe a ah ee a a ee 


Se ee ee Oe a PPO ng 


APPENDIX 565 


money. On the Saturday night, you having completely 
left me unattended and alone since the morning, I asked 
you to come back after dinner, and sit with me for a little. 
With irritable voice and ungracious manner you promise 
to do so. I wait till 11 o’clock, and you never appear. 

At three in the morning, unable to sleep, and tortured 
with thirst, I made my way in the dark and cold, down to 
the sitting-room in the hopes of finding some water there. 
I found you. You fell on me with every hideous word 
an intemperate mood, an undisciplined and untutored 
nature could suggest. By the terrible alchemy of egotism 
you converted your remorse into rage. You accused me 
of selfishness in expecting you to be with me when I was 
ill; of standing between you and your amusements; of 
trying to deprive you of your pleasures. 

You told me, and I know it was quite true, that you 
had come back at midnight simply in order to change 
your dress-clothes, and go out again. 

I told you at length to leave the room; you pretended 
to do so, but when I lifted up my head from the pillow 
in which I had buried it, you were still there, and with 
brutality of laughter and hysteria of rage you moved sud- 
denly towards me. A sense of horror came over me, for 
what exact reason I could not make out; but I got out of 
my bed at once, and bare-footed and just as I was, made 
my way down the two flights of stairs to the sitting-room. 

You returned silently for money; took what you could 
find on the dressing table, and mantelpiece, and left the 
house with your luggage. Need I tell you what I thought 
of you during the two lonely wretched days of illness that 
followed? Is it necessary for me to-state, that I saw 
clearly that it would be a dishonour to myself to continue 
even an acquaintance with such a one as you had showed 
yourself to be? That I recognised that the ultimate mo- 
ment had come and recognised it as being really a great 
relief? And that I knew that for the future my art and 
life would be freer and better and more beautiful in every 
possible way? Ill as I was, I felt at ease. The fact that 
the separation was irrevocable gave me peace. 

Wednesday was my birthday. Amongst the telegrams 


566 APPENDIX 


and communications on my table was a letter in your 
handwriting. I opened it with a sense of sadness on me. 
I knew that the time had gone by when a pretty phrase, an 
expression of affection, a word of sorrow, would make me 
take you back. But I was entirely deceived. I had un- 
derrated you. 

You congratulated me on my prudence in leaving the 
sick bed, on my sudden flight downstairs. “It was an 
ugly moment for you,” you said, ‘‘uglier than you imag- 
ine.” Ah! I felt it but too well. What it had really meant 
I do not know; whether you had with you the pistol you 
had bought to try to frighten your father with, and that 
thinking it to be unloaded, you had once fired off in a 
public restaurant in my company; whether your hand was 
moving towards a common dinner knife that by chance 
was lying on the table between us; whether forgetting in 
your rage your low! stature and inferior strength, you had 
thought of some special personal insult, or attack even, 
as I lay ill there; I could not tell. I do not know to the 
present moment. All I know is that a feeling of utter 
horror had come over me, and that I had felt that unless 
I left the room at once and got away, you would have done 
or tried to do something that would have been, even to 
you, a source of lifelong shame. .... 

On your return to town from the actual scene of the 
tragedy to which you had been summoned, you came at 
once to me very sweetly and very simply, in your suit of 
woe, and with your eyes dim with tears. You sought 
consolation and help, as a child might seek it. I opened 
to you my house, my home, my heart. I made your sor- 
row mine also, that you might have help in bearing it. 
Never even by one word, did I allude to your conduct to- 
wards me, to the revolting scenes, and the revolting letter. 

The gods are strange. It is not our vices only they 
make instruments to scourge us. They bring us to ruin 
through what in us is good, gentle, humane, loving. But 
for my pity and affection for you and yours, I would not 
now be weeping in this terrible place. 


1Lord Alfred Douglas is well above the middle height: he holds himself badly 
but is fully five feet nine inches in height. ~ 


APPENDIX 567 


Of course, I discern in all our relations, not destiny 
rely, but Doom—Doom that walks always swiftly, be- 
cause she goes to the shedding of blood. Through your 
father you come of a race, marriage with whom is horrible, 
friendship fatal, and that lays violent hands either on its 
own life, or on the lives of others. 

[In every little circumstance in which the ways of our 
lives met, in every point of great or seemingly trivial im- 
port in which you came to me for pleasure or help, in the 
small chances, the slight accidents that look, in their rela- 
tion to life, to be no more than the dust that dances in 
a beam, or the leaf that flutters from a tree, ruin followed 
like the echo of a bitter cry, or the shadow that hunts with 
the beast of prey. 

Our friendship really begins with your begging me, in a 
most pathetic and charming letter, to assist you in a posi- 
tion appalling to anyone, doubly so to a young man at 
Oxford. I do so, and ultimately, through your using my 
name as your friend with Sir George Lewis I begin to lose 
his esteem and friendship, a friendship of fifteen fyears’ 
standing. When I was deprived of his advice and help 
and regard, I was deprived of the one great safeguard of 
my life. You send me a very nice poem of the under- 
graduate school of verse for my approval. I reply by a 
letter of fantastic literary conceits; I compare you to 
Hylas, or Hyacinth, Jonquil or Narcissus, or some one 
whom the Great God of Poetry favoured, and honoured 
with his love. The letter is like a passage from one of 
Shakespeare’s sonnets transposed to a minor key. 

It was, let me say frankly, the sort of letter I would, 
in a happy, if wilful moment, have written to any graceful 
young man of either university who had sent me a poem 
of his own making, certain that he would have sufficient 
wit, or culture, to interpret rightly its fantastic phrases. 
Look at the history of that letter! It passes from you 
into the hands of a loathsome companion!, from him to a 
gang of blackmailers, copies of it are sent about London 
to my friends, and to the manager? of the theatre where my 
work is being performed, every construction but the right 

1 The old accusation. 2 Mr. Beerbohm Tree. 


568 APPENDIX 
one is put on it, society is thrilled with the absurd rumours 
that I have had to pay a high sum of money for having 


written an infamous letter to you; this forms the basis of _ 


your father’s worst attack, 

I produce the original letter myself in court to show 
what it really is; it is denounced by your father’s counsel 
as a revolting and insidious attempt to corrupt innocence; 
ultimately it forms part of a criminal charge; the crown 
takes it up; the judge sums up on it with little learning 
and much morality; I go to prison for it at last. That is 
the result of writing you a charming letter. 

It makes me feel sometimes as if you yourself had been 
merely a puppet worked by some secret and unseen hand 
to bring terrible events to a terrible issue. But puppets 
themselves have passions. They will bring a new plot 
into what they are presenting, and twist the ordered issue 
of vicissitude to suit some whim or appetite of their own. 


To be entirely free, and at the same time entirely domi- — 


nated by law, is the eternal paradox of human life that we 
realise at every moment; and this, I often think, is the 
only explanation possible of your nature, if indeed for the 
profound and terrible mystery of a human soul there is any 


explanation at all, except one that makes the mystery all — 


the more marvellous still. 

I thought life was going to be a brilliant comedy, and 
that you were to be one of the graceful figures in it. I 
found it to be a revolting and repellent tragedy, and that 
the sinister occasion of the great catastrophe, sinister in 
its concentration of aim and intensity of narrowed will 
power, was yourself stripped of the mask of joy and pleas- 
ure by which you, no less than I, had been deceived and 
led astray. 

The memory of our friendship is the shadow that walks 
with me here: that seems never to leave me: that wakes 
me up at night to tell me the same story over and over 
till its wearisome iteration makes all sleep abandon me 
till dawn: at dawn it begins again: it follows me into the 
prison yard and makes me talk to myself as I tramp 
round: each detail that accompanied each dreadful mo- 
ment I am forced to recall: there is nothing that happened 


aT pee 


PR FS ee eee Se ee ee 


ee eee ee eee ee ee ee ee ee oe ee ee 


Se ee ee 


APPENDIX 569 


in those ill-starred years that I cannot recreate in that 
chamber of the brain which is set apart for grief or for 
despair; every strained note of your voice, every twitch 
and gesture of your nervous hands, every bitter word, 
every poisonous phrase comes back to me: I remember 
the street or river down which we passed: the wall or 
woodland that surrounded us; at what figure on the dial 
stood the hands of the clock; which way went the wings 
of the wind, the shape and colour of the moon. 

There is, I know, one answer to all that I have said to 
you, and that is that you loved me: that all through those 
two and a half years during which the fates were weaving 
into one scarlet pattern the threads of our divided lives 
you really loved me. 

Though I saw quite clearly that my position in the 
world of art, the interest that my personality had always 
excited, my money, the luxury in which I lived, the thou- 
sand and one things that went to make up a life so charm- 
ingly and so wonderfully inprobable as mine was, were, 
each and all of them, elements that fascinated you and 
made you cling to me; yet besides all this there was some- 
thing more, some strange attraction for you: you loved 
me far better than you loved anyone else. But you, like 

myself, have had a terrible tragedy in your life, though 
one of an entirely opposite character to mine. Do you 
want to learn what it was? It was this. In you, hate 
was always stronger than love. Your hatred! of your 
father was of such stature that it entirely outstripped, 
overgrew, and overshadowed your love of me. There was 
no struggle between them at all, or but little; of such 
dimensions was your hatred and of such monstrous growth. 
You did not realise that there was no room for both pas- 
sions in the same soul: they cannot live together in that 
fair carven house. Love is fed by the imagination, by 
which we become wiser than we know, better than we 
feel, nobler than we are; by which we can see life as a 
whole; by which and by which alone, we can understand 
others in their real as in their ideal relations. Only what 
is fine, and finely conceived, can feed love. But anything 


1The very truth, it seems to me, 


570 APPENDIX 


will feed hate. There was not a glass of champagne that 
you drank, not a rich dish that you ate of in all those years, 
that did not feed your hate and make it fat. So to gratify — 
it, you gambled with my life, as you gambled with my 
money, carelessly, recklessly, indifferent to the conse- 
quences. If you lost, the loss would not, you fancied, be 
yours. If you won, yours, you knew, would be the exulta- 
tion and the advantages of victory. : 

Hate blinds people. You were not aware of that. Love 
can read the writing on the remotest star, but hate so 
blinded you that you could see no further than the narrow, 
walled in, and already lust-withered garden of your com- 
mon desires. Your terrible lack of imagination, the one 
really fatal defect in your character, was entirely the result 
of the hate that lived in you. Subtly, silently, and in 
secret, hate gnawed at your nature, as the lichen bites at 
the root of some sallow plant, till you grew to see nothing 
but the most meagre interests and the most petty aims. 
That faculty in you which love would have fostered, hate 
poisoned and paralysed. 

The idea of your being the object of a terrible quarrel 
between your father and a man of my position seemed to 
delight you. | 

You scented the chance of a public scandal and flew 
to it. The prospect of a battle in which you would be 
safe delighted you. 

You know what my art was to me, the great primal note 
by which I had revealed, first myself to myself, and then 
myself to the world, the great passion of my life, the love 
to which all other loves were as marsh water to red wine, — 
or the glow worm of the marsh to the magic mirror of the 
MOODS ites Don’t you understand now that your lack 
of imagination was the one really fatal defect of your char- 
acter? What you had to do was quite simple, and quite 
clear before you; but hate had blinded you, and you could 
see nothing. 

Life is quite lovely to you. And yet, if you are wise, 
and wish to find life much lovelier still, and in a different 
manner you will let the reading of this terrible letter—for 
such I know it is—prove to you as important a crisis and 


APPENDIX 571. 


turning point of your life as the writing of it is to me. 
Your pale face used to flush easily with wine or pleasure. 
If, as you read what is here written, it from time to time 
becomes scorched, as though by a furnace blast, with 
shame, it will be all the better for you. The supreme vice 
is shallowness. Whatever is realised is right. 

How clearly I saw it then, as now, I need not tell you. 
But I said to myself, ‘‘At all costs I must keep love in my 
heart. If I go into prison without love, what will become 
of my soul?” The letters I wrote to you at that time 
from Holloway were my efforts to keep love as the domi- 
nant note of my own nature. I could, if I had chosen, have 
torn you to pieces with bitter reproaches. I could have 
rent you with maledictions. 

The sins of another were being placed to my account. 
Had I so chosen, I could on either trial have saved myself 
at his expense, not from shame indeed, but from imprison- 
ment.! Had I cared to show that the crown witnesses 
—the three most important—had been carefully coached 
by your father and his solicitors, not in reticences merely, 
but in assertions, in the absolute transference deliberate, 
plotted, and rehearsed, of the actions and doings of some- 
one else on to me, I could have had each one of them dis- 
missed from the box by the judge, more summarily than 
even wretched perjured Atkins was. I could have walked 
out of court with my tongue in my cheek, and my hands 
in my pockets, a free man. The strongest pressure was 
put upon me to do so, I was earnestly advised, begged, 
entreated to do so by people, whose sole interest was my 
welfare, and the welfare of my house. But I refused. 
I did not choose to do so. I have never regretted my 
decision for a single moment, even in the most bitter 
periods of my imprisonment. Such a course of action 
would have been beneath me. Sins of the flesh are noth- 
ing. They are maladies for physicians to cure, if they 
should be cured. Sins of the soul alone are shameful. 
To have secured my acquittal by such means would have 
been a life-long torture to me. But do you really think 


1 Proving another guilty would not have exculpated Oscar. Readers of my book 
will remember that I urged Oscar to tell the truth and how he answered me. 


572 APPENDIX 


that you were worthy of the love I was showing you then, 


or that for a single moment I thought you were? Do you i 
really think that any period of our friendship you were — 


worthy of the love I showed you, or that for a single mo- 


ment I thought you were? I knew you were not. But love — 


does not traffic in a market place, nor use a huckster’s scales, 
Its joy, like the joy of the intellect, is to feel itself alive. 
The aim of love is to love; no more, and no less. You 


were my enemy; stich an enemy as no man ever had. [ 


had given you my life; and to gratify the lowest and most 
contemptible of all human passions, hatred and vanity and 
greed, you had thrown it away. In less than three years 
you had entirely ruined me from every point of view. 
After my terrible sentence, when the prison dress was on 
me, and the prison house closed, I sat amidst the ruins of 


my wonderful life, crushed by anguish, bewildered with — 


terror, dazed through pain. But I would not hate you. 


Every day I said to myself, ‘‘I must keep love in my heart 


to-day, else how shall I live through the day?”’ I reminded 

myself that you meant no evil to me at any rate. .... 
It all flashed across me, and I remember that for the 

first and last time in my entire prison life, I laughed. In 


that laugh was all the scorn of all the world. Prince © 


Fleur de lys! I saw that nothing that had happened had 
made you realise a single thing. You were, in your own 
eyes, still the graceful prince of a trivial comedy, not the 
sombre figure of a tragic show. 


Had there been nothing in your heart to cry out against 


so vulgar a sacrilege, you might at least have remembered 
the sonnet he wrote who saw with such sorrow and scorn 
the letters of John Keats sold by public auction in London, 
and have understood at last the real meaning of my lines: 

“i . . I think they love not art 

Who break the crystal of a poet’s heart 

That small and sickly eyes may glare or gloat.” 

One cannot always keep an adder in one’s breast to feed 
on one, nor rise up every night to sow thorns in the garden 
of one’s soul. 

I cannot allow you to go through life bearing in your 
heart the burden of having ruined a man like me. 


APPENDIX 572 


Does it ever occur to you what an awful position I would 
have been in if, for the last two years, during my appalling 
sentence, I had been dependent on you as a friend? Do 
you ever think of that? Do you ever feel any gratitude 
to those who by kindness without stint, devotion without 
limit, cheerfulness and joy in giving, have lightened my 
black burden for me, have arranged my future life for me, 
have visited me again and again, have written to me beau- 
tiful and sympathetic letters, have managed my affairs 
for me, have stood by me in the teeth of obloquy, taunt, 
open sneer or insult even? I thank God every day that 
he gave me friends other than you. I owe everything to 
them. The very books in my cell are paid for by Robbie 
out of his pocket money. From the same source! are to 
come clothes for me when I am released. I am not 
ashamed of taking a thing that is given by love and affec- 
tion. [I am proud of it. But do you ever think of what 
friends such as More Adey, Robbie, Robert Sherard, Frank 
Harris, and Arthur Clifton have been to me in giving me 
comfort, help, affection, sympathy and the like? .... 

I know that your mother, Lady Queensberry, puts the 
blame on me. I hear of it, not from people who know 
you, but from people who do not know you, and do not 
desire to know you. I hear of it often. She talks of the 
- influence of an elder over a younger man, for instance. It 
is one of her favourite attitudes towards the question, as 
it is always’a successful appeal to popular prejudice and 
ignorance. I need not ask you what influence I had over 
you. You know I had none. 

It was one of your frequent boasts that I had none, the 
only one indeed, that was well founded. What was there, 
as a mere matter of fact, in you that I could influence? 
Your brain? It was undeveloped. Your imagination? 
It was dead. Your heart? It was not yet born. Of all 
the people who have ever crossed my life, you were the one, 
and the only one, I was unable in any way to influence in 
any direction. 

I waited month after month to hear from you. Even 


Ne As will be seen from a letter of Oscar Wilde which I reproduce later, I supplied 
e clothes. 


574 APPENDIX 


if I had not been waiting but had shut the doors against 
you, you should have remembered that no one can possi- 


bly shut the doors against love forever. The unjust judge — 


in the gospels rises up at length to give a just decision 
because justice comes daily knocking at his door: and at 
night time the friend, in whose heart there is no real 
friendship, yields at length to his friend “because of his im- 
portunity.” There is no prison in any world into which love 
cannot force an entrance. If you did not understand that, 
you did not understand anything about loveatall..... 

Write to me with full frankness, about yourself: about 
your life: your friends: your occupations: your books. 
Whatever you have to say for yourself, say it without 
fear. Don’t write what you don’t mean: that is all. If 
anything in your letter is false or counterfeit I shall de- 
tect it by the ring at once. It is not for nothing, or to 
no purpose that in my lifelong cult of literature, I have 
made myself, 

“Miser of sound and syllable, no less 
Than Midas of his coinage.” 

Remember also that I have yet to know you. Perhaps 
we have yet to know each other. For myself, I have but 
this last thing to say. Do not be afraid of the past. If © 
people tell you that it is irrevocable, do not believe them. 
The past, the present and the future are but one moment 
in the sight of God, in whose sight we should try to live. 
Time and space, succession and extension, are merely ac- 
cidental conditions of a thought. The imagination can 
transcend them and more, in a free sphere of ideal ex- 
istences. Things, also, are in their essence what we choose 
to make them. A thing is, according to the mode in 
which one looks at it. ‘‘Where others,” says Blake, ‘‘see 
but the dawn coming over the hill, I see the sons of God 
shouting for joy.”’ What seemed to the world and to 
myself my future I lost irretrievably when I let myself 
be taunted into taking the action against your father, 
had, I daresay, lost in reality long before that. What lies 
before me is the past. I have got to make myself look 
on that with different eyes, to make the world look on it 
with different eyes, to make God look on it with different 


APPENDIX 575 


eyes. This I cannot do by ignoring it, or slighting it, or 
praising it, or denying it. It is only to be done fully by 
accepting it as an inevitable part of the evolution of my 
life and character: by bowing my head to everything that 
I have suffered. 

How far I am away from the true temper of soul, this 
letter in its changing, uncertain moods, its scorn and bit- 
terness, its aspirations and its failures to realise those 
aspirations shows you quite clearly. But do not forget in 
what a terrible school I am setting at my task. And incom- 
plete, imperfect, as I am, yet from me you may have still 
much to gain. You came to me to learn the pleasure of 
life and the pleasure of art. Perhaps I am chosen to 
teach you something much more wonderful, the meaning 
of sorrow and its beauty. 

Your affectionate friend, 
Oscar WILDE. 


This letter of Oscar Wilde to Lord Alfred Douglas is 
curiously self-revealing and characteristic. While reading 
it one should recall Oscar’s provocation. Lord Alfred 
Douglas had driven him to the prosecution, and then 
deserted him and left him in prison without using his 
_ influence to mitigate his friend’s suffering or his pen to 
console and encourage him. The abandonment was heart- 
less and complete. The letter, however, is vindictive: in 
spite of its intimate revelations Oscar took care that his 
indictment should be made public. The flagrant self- 
deceptions of the plea show its sincerity: Oscar even ac- 
cuses young Alfred Douglas of having induced him to 
eat and drink too much. 

The tap-root of the letter is a colossal vanity; the bit- 
terness of it, wounded egotism; the falseness of it, a self- 
righteous pose of ineffable superiority as of a superman. 
Oscar denies to Alfred Douglas imagination, scholarship, 
or even a knowledge of poetry: he tells him in so many 
words:—he is without brain or heart. Then why did he 
allow himself to be hag-ridden to his ruin by such a 
creature? 

Yet how human the letter is, how pathetic! 


OSCAR WILDE’S KINDNESS OF HEART 


Here is a note which Oscar Wilde wrote to Warder 


Martin towatds the end of his imprisonment in Reading 
Gaol. Warder Martin, it will be remembered, was dis- 
missed from his post for having given some sweet biscuits, 


bought with his own money, to some hungry little children 


confined in the prison. 

Wilde happened to see the children and immediately 
wrote this note on a scrap of paper and slipped it under 
his door so that it shold catch Warder Martin’s eye as 
he patrolled the corridor. 

Please find out for me the name of A. 2.11. Also, the 
names of the children who are in for the rabbits, and 
the amount of the fine. 

Can I pay this and get them out? If so I will get 


them out tomorrow. Please, dear friend, dothisforme. 


IT must get them out. 

Think what a thing for me it would be to be able to 
help three little children. I would be delighted beyond 
words: if I can do this by paying the fine tell the children 


that they are to be released tomorrow by a friend, and ~ 


ask them to be happy and not ta tell anyone. 


Here is a second note which shows Oscar’s peculiar 
sensitiveness; what is ugly and terrible cannot, he thinks, 
furnish even the subject of art; he shrinks from whatever 
gives pain. 

I hope to write about prison-life and to try and change 

it for others, but it is too terrible and ugly to make a 

work of art of. I have suffered too much in it to write 

plays about it. | 


A third note simply thanks Warder Martin for all his | 


kindness. It ends with the words: 
. Everyone tells me I am looking better and 
happier. 
This is because I have a good friend who gives me The 
Chronicle and PROMISES me singer biscuits. O.W. 


576 


we ee ee 


Fac-simile of Oscar’s note about freeing the children which he pushed 
under the door for Warder Martin 


> 


fA 


MY COLDNESS TOWARDS OSCAR IN 1897 
(See page 408) 


WHEN I talked with Oscar in Reading Gaol, he told me 
that the only reason he didn’t write was that no one 
would accept his work. I assured him that I would pub- 
lish it in The Saturday Review and would pay for it not 
only at the rate I paid Bernard Shaw but also if it in- 
creased the sale of the journal I’d try to compute its value 
to the paper and give him that besides. He told me 
that was too liberal; he would be quite content with what 
I paid Shaw: he feared that no one else in England would 
ever publish his work again. 

He promised to send me the book ‘‘De Profundis” 
as soon as it was finished. Just before his release his 
friend, Mr. More Adey, called upon me and wanted to 
know whether I would publish Oscar’s work. I said I 
would. He then asked me what I would give for it. I 
told him I didn’t want to make anything out of Oscar 
and would give him as much as I could, rehearsing the 
proposal I had made to Oscar. Thereupon he told me 
- Oscar would prefer a fixed price. I thought the answer 
extraordinary and the gentle, urbane manner of Mr. More 
Adey, whom I hardly knew at that time and misunder- 
stood, got on my nerves. [I replied curtly that before I 
could state a price, I’d have to see the work, adding at the 
same time that I had wished to do Oscar a good turn, 
but, if he could find another publisher, 1’d be delighted. 
Mr. More Adey assured me that there was nothing in the 
book to which any prude even could object, no arriere 
pensée of any kind, and so forth and so on. I answered 
with a jest, a wretched play on his French phrase. 

That night I happened to dine with Whistler and telling 
him of what had occurred called forth a most stinging gibe 
at Oscar’s expense. Whistler’s mot cannot be published. 

A week or two later Oscar asked me to get him some 
clothes, which I did and on his release sent them to him, 


577 


578 APPENDIX 


and received in reply a letter thanking me which I repro- 
duce on page 583. 

In that same talk with Oscar in Reading Gaol, I was 
so desirous of helping him that I proposed a driving tour 
through France. I told him of one I had made a couple 
of years before which was full of delightful episodes—an 
entrancing holiday. He jumped at the idea, said nothing ~ 
would please him better, he would feel safe with me, and 
so forth. In order to carry out the idea in the best way 
I ordered an American mail phaeton so that a pair of horses 
would find the load, even with luggage, ridiculously light. 
I asked Mr. More Adey whether Oscar had spoken to him 
of this proposed trip: he told me he had heard nothing of it. 

In one letter to me Oscar asked me to postpone the 
tour; afterwards he never mentioned it. I thought I had 
been treated rather cavalierly. As I had gone to some 
expense in getting everything ready and making myself 
free, I, no doubt, expressed some amazement at Oscar’s 
silence on the matter. At any rate the idea got about 
that I was angry with him, and Oscar believed it. 
Nothing could have been further from the truth. What I 
had done and proposed was simply in his interest: I 
expected no benefit of any kind and therefore could not 
be cross; but the belief that I was angry drew this sincere 
and touching letter from Oscar, which I think shows him 
almost as perfectly as that still more beautiful letter to 
Robert Ross which I have inserted in Chapter XIX. 


From 
M. Sebastian Melmoth, 
Hotel de la Plage, 
Bernavol-sur-Mer, 
Dieppe. 


3 
My DEAR FRANK: June 13, (97; 

I know you do not like writing letters, but still I think 
you might have written me a line in answer, or acknowl- 
edgment of my letter! to you from Dieppe. I am thinking 
of a story to be called “‘The Silence of Frank Harris.” 


1 His letter was merely an acknowledgment that he had received the clothes and 
cheqtte and was grateful. I saw nothing in it to answer as he had not even men- 
tioned the driving tour, 


APPENDIX 579 


I have, however, heard during the last few days that 
you do not speak of me in the friendly manner I would 
like. This distresses me very much. 

I am told that you are hurt with me because my letter 
of thanks to you was not sufficiently elaborated in expres- 
sion. This I can hardly credit. It seems so unworthy of 
a big strong nature like yours, that knows the realities of 
life. I told you I was grateful to you for your kindness 
tome. Words, zow, to me signify things, actualities, real 
emotions, realised thoughts. I learnt in prison to be 
grateful. I used to think gratitude a burden. Now I 
know that it is something that makes life lighter as well 
as lovelier for one. I am grateful for a thousand things, 
from my good friends down to the sun and the sea. But 
IT cannot say more than that I am grateful. I cannot 
make phrases about it. For me to use such a word shows 
an enormous development in my nature. Two years ago 
I did not know the feeling the word denotes. Now I 
know it, and I am thankful that I have learnt that much, 
at any rate, by having been in prison. But I must say 
again that I no longer make roulades of phrases about the 
deep things I feel. When I write directly to you, I speak 
directly: violin variations don’t interest me. I am grate- 
_ ful to you. If that does not content you, then you do 
not understand, what you of all men should understand, 
how sincerity of feeling expresses itself. But I daresay 
the story told of you is untrue. It comes from so many 
quarters that it probably is. 

I am told also that you are hurt! because I did not go 
on the driving-tour with you. You should understand 
that in telling you that it was impossible for me to do so, 
I was thinking as much of you as of myself. Tothink of the 
feelings and happiness of others is not an entirely new 
emotion in my nature. I would be unjust to myself and 
my friends, if I said it was. But I think of those things 
far more than I used to do. If I had gone with you, you 
would not have been happy, nor enjoyed yourself. Nor 
would I. You must try to realise what two years cellular 


1J felt hurt that he dropped the idea without giving me any reason or even letting 
me know his change of purpose. 


580 APPENDIX 


corifinement is, and what two years of absolute silence 
means to a man of my intellectual power. To have sur- 
vived at all—to have come out sane in mind and sound 
of body—is a thing so marvellous to me, that it seems to 
me sometimes, not that the age of miracies is over, but 
that it is just beginning; that there are powers in God, 


and powers in man, of which the world has up to the — 


present known little. But while I am cheerful, happy, 
and have sustained to the full that passionate interest in 
life and art that was the dominant chord of my nature, 
and made all modes of existence and all forms of expression 
utterly fascinating to me always—still I need rest, quiet, 
and often complete solitude. Friends have come to see 
me here for a day, and have been delighted to find me 
like my old self, in all intellectual energy and sensitiveness 
to the play of life, but it has always proved afterwards to 


te 


have been a strain upon a nervous force, much of which — 


has been destroyed. I have now no storage! of nervous 
force. When I expend what I have, in an afternoon, 
nothing remains. I look to quiet, to a simple mode of 
existence, to nature in all the infinite meanings of an 
infinite word, to charge the cells for me. Every day, if I 
meet a friend, or write a letter longer than a few lines, or 
even read a book that makes, as all fine books do, a direct 
claim on me, a direct appeal, an intellectual challenge of any 
kind, I am utterly exhausted in the evening, and often sleep 
badly. And yet it is three whole weeks since I was 
released. 

Had I gone with you on the driving tour, where we 
would have of necessity been in immediate contact with 
each other from dawn to sunset, I would have certainly 
broken off the tour the third day, probably broken down 
the second. You would have then found yourself in a 
pitiable position: your tour would have been arrested at 
its outset: your companion would have been ill without 
doubt: perhaps might have needed care and attendance, 
in some little remote French village. You would have 

1T think this was true; though it had never struck me till I read this letter. 
Later, in order to excuse himself for not working, he magnified the effect on his 


health of prison life. A year after his release I think he had as large a reserve of 
nervous energy as ever. 


APPENDIX 581 


given it to me, I know. But I felt it would have been 
wrong, stupid, and thoughtless of me to have started an 
expedition doomed to swift failure, and perhaps fraught 
with disaster and distress. You are a man of dominant 
personality: your intellect is exigent, more so than that of 
any man I ever knew: your demands on life are enormous: 
you require response, or you annihilate: the pleasure of 
being with you is in the clash of personality, the intellec- 
tual battle, the war of ideas. To survive you, one must 
have a strong brain, an assertive ego, a dynamic character. 
In your luncheon parties, in the oid days, the remains of the 
guests were taken away with the débris of the feast. I 
have often lunched with you in Park Lane and found 
myself the only survivor. I might have driven on the 
white roads, or through the leafy lanes, of France, with a 
fool, or with the wisest of all things, a child: with you, it 
would have been impossible. You should thank me sin- 
cerely for having saved you from an experience that each 
of us would have always regretted. 

Will you ask me why then, when I was in prison, I 
accepted with grateful thanks your offer? My dear Frank, 
I don’t think you will ask so thoughtless a question. The 
prisoner looks to liberty as an immediate return to all his 
ancient energy, quickened into more vital forces by long 
disuse. When he goes out, he finds he has still to suffer: 
his punishment, as far as its effects go, lasts intellectually 
and physically just as it lasts socially: he has still to pay: 
one gets no receipt for the past when one walks out into 
the beautiful air. .... 

I have now spent the whole of my Sunday afternoon— 
the first real day of summer we have had—in writing to 
you this long letter of explanation. 

I have written directly and simply: I need not tell the 
author of ‘‘Elder Conklin”? that sweetness and simplicity 
of expression take more out of one than fiddling har- 
monics on one string. I felt it my duty to write, but it 
has been a distressing one. It would have been better for 
me to have lain in the brown grass on the cliff, or to have 
walked: slowly by the sea. It would have been kinder of 
you to have written to me directly about whatever harsh 


582 APPENDIX 


or hurt feelings you may have about me. It would have 
saved me an afternoon of strain, and tension. 

But I have something more to say. It is pleasanter to 
me, now, to write about others, than about myself. 

The enclosed is from a brother prisoner of mine: re- 


leased June 4th: pray read it: you will see his age, offence, 


and aim in life. 

If you can give him a trial, do so. If you see your way 
to this kind action, and write to him to come and see you, 
kindly state in your letter that it is about a situation. 
He may think otherwise that it is about the flogging of 
A. 2.11., a thing that does not interest you, and about 
which he is a little afraid to talk. 

If the result of this long letter will be that you will help 
this fellow prisoner of mine to a place in your service, I 
shall consider my afternoon better spent than any after- 
noon for the last two years, and three weeks. 


In any case I have now written to you fully on all thine ; 


as reported to me. 

I again assure you of my gratitude for your kindness 
to me during my imprisonment, and on my release. 

And am always 
Your sincere friend and admirer 
OscaR WILDE. 

With regard to Lawley 

All soldiers are neat, and smart, and make capital serv- 
ants. He would be a good groom: he is, I believe, a 3rd 
Hussars man—he was a quiet, well-conducted chap in 
Reading always. 


Naturally I replied to this letter at once, saying that 
he had been misinformed, that I was not angry and if I 
could do anything for him I should be delighted: I did 
my best, too, for Lawley. 


r 
i a li a ge 


APPENDIX 583 


Here is his letter of thanks to me for helping him 
when he came out of prison. 


Sandwich Hotel, 


My DEAR FRANK: Preppe: 


Just a line to thank you for your great kindness to me 
—for the lovely clothes, and for the generous cheque. 

You have been a real good friend to me—and [ shall 
never forget your kindness: to remember such a debt as 
mine to you—a debt of kind fellowship—is a pleasure. 

About our tour—later on let us think about it. My 
friends have been so kind to me here that I am feeling 
happy already. 

Yours, 
OscAR WILDE. 

If you write to me please do so under cover to R. B. 

Ross, who is here with me. 


In the next letter of his which I have kept Oscar is per- 
fectly friendly again; he tells me that he is “entirely 
without money, having received nothing from his Trustees 
for months,’”’ and asks me for even £5, adding, “I drift 
in ridiculous impecuniosity without a sou.” 


THE MYSTERY OF PERSONALITY 


I TRANSCRIBE here another letter of Oscar to me from the 
second year after his release to show his interest in all 
intellectual things and for a flash of characteristic humour 
at the expense of the Paris police. The envelope is dated 
October 13, 1898:— 


From 
M. Sebastian Melmoth, 
Hotel d’Alsace, 
Rue des Beaux-arts, 
Paris. 
My DEAR FRANK: 

How are your I read your appreciation of Rodin’s 
“Balzac” with intensest pleasure, and I am looking for- 
ward to more Shakespeare—you will of course put all 
your Shakespearean essays into a book, and, equally of 


course, I must have a copy. It is a great era in Shake- © 


spearean criticism—the first time that one has looked in 
the plays not for philosophy, for there is none, but for the 
wonder of a great personality—something far better, and 


far more mysterious than any philosophy—it is a great 


thing that you have done. I remember writing once in 
“Intentions”? that the more objective a work of art is in 
form, the more subjective it really is in matter—and that 
it is only when you give the poet a mask that he can tell 


you the truth. But you have shown it fully in the case 


of the one artist whose personality was supposed to be a 
mystery of deep s€as, a secret as impenetrable as the secret 
of the moon. 

Paris is terrible in its heat. I walk in streets of brass, 
and there is no one here. Even the criminal classes have 
gone to the seaside, and the gendarmes yawn and regret 
their enforced idleness. Giving wrong directions to the 
English tourists is the only thing that consoles them. 

You were most kind and generous last month in letting 
me have a cheque—it gives me just the margin to live on 
and to live by. May I have it again this month? or has 
gold flown away from you? Ever yours, 

OSCAR. 


584 


, eS 


THE DEDICATION OF “AN IDEAL HUSBAND” 


I RECEIVED the following letter from Oscar early in 
1899 I imagine. _ It was written in the spring after the 
winter we spent in La Napoule. 


From M. Sebastian Melmoth, 
Gland, 
Canton Vaud, 
Switzerland. 


My DEAR FRANK: 

Iam, as you see from above, in Switzerland with M——: 
a rather dreadful combination: the villa is pretty, and on 
the borders of the lake with pretty pines about: on the 
other side are the mountains of Savoy and Mont Blane: 
we are an hour, by a slow train, from Geneva. But M 
is tedious, and lacks conversation: also he gives me Swiss 
Wine to drink: it is horrible: he occupies himself with 
small economies, and mean domestic interests, so I suffer 
very much. Ennuzi is the enemy. 

I want to know if you will allow me to dedicate to you 
_ my next play, ‘The Ideal Husband”—which Smithers 
is bringing out for me in the same form as the others, of 
which I hope you received your copy. I should so much 
like to write your name and a few words on the dedica- 
tory page. 

I look back with joy and regret to the lovely sunlight 
of the Riviera, and the charming winter you so generously 
and kindly gave me: it was most good of you: how can it 
ever be forgotten by me. 

Next week a petroleum launch is to arrive here, so that 
will console me a little, as I love to be on the water: and 
the Savoy side is starred with pretty villages and green 
valleys. 

Of course we won our bet—the phrase on Shelley is in 

Arnold’s preface to Byron: but M won’t pay me! 
He suffers agony over a franc. It is very annoying as l 


585 


586 APPENDIX 


have had no money since my arrival here. However I 
regard the place as a Swiss Pension—where there is no 
weekly bill, .... 
Ever yours, 
OSCAR. 


I believe I answered; but am not sure. I was naturally 
delighted to have just ““An Ideal Husband” dedicated to 
me, because I had suggested the plot of it to Oscar—not 
that the plot was in any true sense mine. An interesting 
and clever American in Cairo, a Mr. Cope Whitehouse, 
had given it to me as I tell in this book. The story 
Whitehouse told may not be true; but my mind jumped 
at once to the thought of a story where an English Minister 
would be confronted with some early sin of that sort. I 
had hardly bettered the story given to me when I related 
it to Oscar who used it almost immediately with great 
effect. Dedicatory words are usually as flattering as epi- 
taphs; those of ‘‘An Ideal Husband” run: 


To 
FRANK HARRIS 
A SLIGHT TRIBUTE TO 
His PowER AND DISTINCTION 
AS AN ARTIST 
His CHIVALRY AND NOBILITY 
AS A FRIEND 


MRS. WILDE’S EPITAPH 
(See page 447) 


AN evil fate seems to have pursued even Oscar’s wife. 
She died in Genoa and was buried in the corner of the 
Campo Santo set apart for Protestants. This is what 
one reads on her tombstone: 


CONSTANCE 
DAUGHTER OF THE LATE 
Horatio Liovp, Q.C. 
HORN Gots oa DEO 


No reference to her marriage or to the famous man who 
was the father of her two sons. 

The irony of chance wills it that the late Horatio Lloyd, 
Q.C., had been more than suspected of sexual viciousness: 
cfr. “Criticisms by Robert Ross” at end of Appendix. 


587 


| 


SONNET 
(See page 517) 
TO OSCAR WILDE 


I dreamed of you last night, I saw your face 
Ail radiant and unshadowed of distress, 

And as of old, in measured tunefulness, 

I heard your golden voice and marked you trace 
Under the common thing the hidden grace, 
And conjure wonder out of emptiness, 

Till mean things put on Beauty like a dress, 
And all the world was an enchanted place. 


And so I knew that it was well with you, 

And that unprisoned, gloriously free, 

Across the dark you stretched me out your hand. 
And all the spite of this besotted crew, 
(Scrabbling on pillars of Eternity) 

How small it seems! Love made me understand. 


December 10, 1900. ALFRED DOUGLAS. 


WHOEVER chooses to compare this first sketch of the 
sonnet of 1900 with the sonnet as it was published in 1910 
will remark three notable differences. 

The first sketch was entitled ‘“‘To Oscar Wilde,” the 
revision to “‘The Dead Poet.” 

In the early draft, the first line: 

“T dreamed of you last night, I saw your face,” has be- 
come less intimate, having been changed into: 

“T dreamed of him last night, I saw his face.’ 

Finally the sextet which in the first sketch was very 
inferior to the rest has now been discarded in favour of six 
lines which are worthy of the octave. The published 
sonnet is assuredly superior to the first sketch superb 
though that was. 


538 


THE STORY OF “MR. AND MRS. DAVENTRY” 
(See page 534) 


THERE has been so much discussion about the play en- 
titled ‘Mr. and Mrs. Daventry,” and Oscar Wilde’s share 
init, that I had better set forth here briefly what happened. 

When I returned to London in the summer of 1899 after 
buying, as [ thought, all rights in the sketch of the scenario 
from Oscar, [ wrote at once the second, third and fourth 
acts of the play, as I had told Oscar I would. I sent him 
what I had written and asked him to write the first act 
as he had promised for the £50. 

Some time before this I had seen Mr. Forbes Robertson 
and Mrs. Patrick Campbell in ‘‘Hamlet,” and Mrs. Pat- 
rick Campbell’s Ophelia had made a deeper impression 
on me than even the Hamlet of Forbes Robertson. I 
wished her to take my play, and as luck would have it, 
she had just gone into management on her own account 
and leased the Royalty Theatre. 

I read her my play one afternoon, and at once she told 
me she would take it; but I must write a first act. I told 
her that I was no good at preliminary scenes and that 
Oscar Wilde had promised to write a first act, which 
would, of course, enhance the value of the play enormously. 

To my surprise Mrs. Patrick Campbell would not hear 
of it: ‘Quite impossible,”’ she said, ‘‘a play’s not a patch- 
work quilt; you must write the first act yourself.”’ 

“‘T must write to Oscar then,” I replied, ‘‘and see whether 
he has finished it already or not.” 

Mrs. Campbell insisted that the play, if she was to 
accept it, must be the work of one hand. I wrote to 
Oscar at once, asking him whether he had written the 
first act, adding that if he had not written it and would 
send me his idea of the scenario, I would write it. I was 
overjoyed to tell him that Mrs. Patrick Campbell had 
provisionally accepted the play. 


589 


590 APPENDIX 


To my astonishment Oscar replied in evident ill-temper 
to say that he could not write the first act, or the scenario, 
but at the same time he hoped I would now send him some 
money for having helped to make my début on the stage. 

I returned to tell Mrs. Campbell my disappointment 
and to see if she had any idea of what she wanted in the 
first act. She was delighted with my news, and said that 
all I had to do was to write an act introducing my char- 
acters, and that I ought, for the sake of contrast, to give 
her a mother. Some impish spirit suggested to me the 
idea of making a mother much younger than her daughter, 
that is, a very flighty ordinary woman, impulsive and 
feather-brained, with a mania for attending sales and 
collecting odds and ends at bargain prices. Full of this 
idea I wrote the first act off hand. 

Mrs. Patrick Campbell did not like it much, and in 
this, as indeed always, showed excellent judgment and an 
extraordinary understanding of the requirements of the 
stage; nevertheless she accepted the play and settled 
terms. A little later I went to Leeds, where she was 
playing, and read the play to her and her ‘‘Company.” 
We discussed the cast, and I suggested Mr. Kerr to play 
Mr. Daventry. Mrs. Patrick Campbell jumped at the 
idea, and everything was settled. 

I wrote the good news to Oscar, and back came another 
letter from him, more ill-tempered than the first, saying 
he had never thought I would take his scenario; I had no 
tight to touch it; but as I had taken it, I must really pay 
him something substantial. 

The claim was absurd, but I hated to dispute with him 
or even appear to bargain. 

I wrote to him that if I made anything out of the play 
I would send him some more money. He replied that he 
was sure my play would be a failure; but I ought to get a 
good sum down in advance of royalties from Mrs. Patrick 
Campbell, and at once send him half of it. His letters 
were childishly ill-conditioned and unreasonable; but, 
believing him to be in extreme indigence, I felt too sorry 
for him even to argue the point. Again and again I had 
helped him, and it seemed sordid and silly to hurt our 


APPENDIX 5QI 


old friendship for money. I couldn’t believe that he 
would talk of my having done anything that I ought 
not to have done if we met, so as soon as I could I 
crossed to Paris to have it out with him. 

To my astonishment I found him obdurate in his wrong- 
headedness. When I asked him what he had sold me for 
the £50 I paid him, he coolly said he didn’t think I was 
serious, that no man would write a play on another man’s 
Scenario; it was absurd, impossible—“C’est ridicule!’’ he 
repeated again and again. When I reminded him that 
Shakespeare had done it, he got angry: it was altogether 
different then—today: “C'est ridicule!’”? Tired of going 
over and over the old ground I pressed him to tell me 
What he wanted. For hours he wouldn’t say: then at 
length he declared he ought to have half of all the play 
fetched, and even that wouldn’t be fair to him, as he 
was a dramatist and I was not, and I ought not to have 
touched his scenario and so on, over and over again. 

I returned to my hotel wearied in heart and head by 
his ridiculous demands and reiterations. After thrashing 
the beaten straw to dust on the following day, I agreed at 
length to give him another £50 down and another £50 later. 
Even then he pretended to be very sorry indeed that I had 
taken what he called “his play,’’ and assured mein the same 
breath that ‘‘Mr. and Mrs. Daventry” would be a rank 
failure: ‘‘Plays cannot be written by amateurs; plays re- 
quire knowledge of the stage. It’s quite absurd of you, 
Frank, who hardly ever go to the theatre, to think you 
can write a successful play straight off. I always loved 
the theatre, always went to every first night in London, 
have the stage in my blood,’ and so forth and so on. 
could not help recalling what he had told me years be- 
fore, that when he had to write his first play for George 
Alexander, he shut himself up for a fortnight with the 
most successful modern French plays, and so learned his 
métier. | 

Next day I returned to London, understanding now 
something of the unreasonable persistence in begging which 
had aroused Lord Alfred Douglas’ rage. 

As soon as my play was advertised a crowd of people 


592 APPENDIX 


confronted me with claims I had never expected. Mrs, 
Brown Potter wrote to me saying that some years before 
she had bought a play from Oscar Wilde which he had 
not delivered, and as she understood that I was bringing 
it out, she hoped I would give it to her to stage. I replied 
saying that Oscar had not written a word of my play. 
She wrote again, saying that she had paid £100 for the 
scenario: would I see Mr. Kyrle Bellew on the matter? 
I saw them both a dozen times; but came to no decision. 

While these negotiations were going on, a host of other 
Richmonds came into the field. Horace Sedger had also 
bought the same scenario, and then in quick succession 
it appeared that Tree and Alexander and Ada Rehan had 
also paid for the same privilege. When I wrote to Oscar 
about this expressing my surprise he replied coolly that he 
could have gone on selling the play now to French man- 
agers, and later to German managers, if I had not inter- 
fered: ‘‘You have deprived me of a certain income:” was 
his argument, ‘‘and therefore you owe me more than you 
will ever get from the play, which is sure to fall flat.” 

A little later Miss Nethersole presented herself, and 
when I would not yield to her demands, went to Paris, 
and Oscar wrote to me saying she ought to stage the piece 


as she would do it splendidly, or at least I should repay 


her the money she had advanced to him. 

This letter showed me that Oscar had not only deceived 
me, but, for some cause or other, some pricking of vanity 
I couldn’t understand, was willing to embarrass me as much 
as possible without any scruple. 

Finally Smithers, the publisher of three of Oscar’s books, 
whom I knew to be a real friend of Oscar, came to me with 
a still more appealing story. When Oscar was in Italy, 
and in absolute need, Smithers got a man named Roberts 
to advance £100 on the scenario. I found that Oscar had 
written out the whole scenario for him and outlined the 
characters of his drama. This was evidently the com- 
pletest claim that had yet been brought before me: it was 
also, Smithers proved, the earliest, and Smithers himself 
was in dire need. I wrote to Oscar that I thought Smithers 
had the best claim because he was the first buyer, and 


ee) eet 


APPENDIX 593 


certainly ought to have something. Oscar replied, begging 
me not to be a fool: to send him the money and tell Smith- 
ers to go to Sheol. Thereupon I told Smithers I could not 
afford to give him any money at the moment; but if the 
play was a success he should have something out of it. 

The play was a success: it was stopped for a week by 
Queen Victoria’s death, in January, and was, I think, the 
only play that sur vived that ordeal. Mrs. Patrick Camp- 
bell was good enough to allow me to rewrite the first act 
for the fiftieth performance, and it ran, if I remember 
rightly, some 130 nights. About the twentieth representa- 
tion I paid Smithers. 

For the first weeks of the run I was bombarded with 
letters from Oscar, begging money and demanding money 
in every tone. He made nothing of the fact that I had 
already paid him three times the price agreed upon, and 
paid Smithers to boot, and lost through his previous sales 
of the scenario whatever little repute the success of the 
piece might have brought me. Nine people out of ten 
believed that Oscar had written the play and that I had 
merely lent my name to the production in order to enable 
him, as a bankrupt, to receive the money from it. Even 
men of letters deceived themselves in this way. George 
Moore told Bernard Shaw that he recognised Oscar’s hand 
in the writing again and again, though Shaw himself was 
far too keen-witted to be so misled. As a matter of fact 
Oscar did not write a word of the play and the characters 
he sketched for Smithers and Roberts were altogether 
different from mine and were not known to me when A 
wrote my story. 

I have set forth the bare facts of the affair here because 
Oscar managed to half-persuade Ross and Turner and 
other friends that I owed him money which I would not 
pay; though Ross had discounted most of his complaints, 
even before hearing my side. 

Oscar got me over to Paris in September under the 
pretext that he was ill; but I found him as well as could 
be, and anxious merely to get more money out of me by 
any means. I put it all down to his poverty. I did not 
then know that Ross was giving him £150 a year; that 


594 APPENDIX 


indeed all his friends had helped him and were helping 
him with singular generosity, and I recalled the fact that 
when he had had money he never showed any meanness, 
or any desire to over-reach. Want is a dreadful teacher, 
and I did not hold Oscar altogether responsible for his 
weird attitude to me personally. 


OSCAR’S LAST DAYS! 


LETTER FROM ROBERT ROSS TO 


Dec. 14th, 1900. 

On Tuesday, October oth, I wrote to Oscar, from whom 
I had not heard for some time, that I would be in Paris 
on Thursday, October the 18th, for a few days, when I 
hoped to see him. On Thursday, October 11th, I got a 
telegram from him as follows:—‘‘ Operated on yesterday— 
come over as soon as possible.’’ I wired that I would en- 
deavour to do so. A wire came in response, “‘ Terribly 
weak—please come.” I started on the evening of Tuesday, 
October 16th. On Wednesday morning I went to see 
him about 10.30. He was in very good spirits; and though 
he assured me his sufferings were dreadful, at the same 
time he shouted with laughter and told many stories 
against the doctors and himself. I stayed until 12.30 and 
returned about 4.30, when Oscar recounted his grievances 
about the Harris play. Oscar, of course, had deceived 
Harris about the whole matter—as far as I could make 
out the story—Harris wrote the play under the impression 
that only Sedger had to be bought off at £100, which 
Osear had received in advance for the commission; whereas 
Kyrle Bellew, Louis Nethersole, Ada Rehan, and even 
Smithers, had all given Oscar £100 on different occasions, 
and all threatened Harris with proceedings—Harris, there- ‘ 
fore, only gave Oscar £50 on account,! as he was obliged 
to square these people first—hence Oscar’s grievance. 
When I pointed out to him that he was in a much better 
position than formerly, because Harris, at any rate, would 
eventually pay off the people who had advanced money 
and that Oscar would eventually get something himself, 
he replied in the characteristic way, “Frank has deprived 


venigs pounds was all Oscar asked me: the whole sum agreed upon. Asa matter 
of fact I gave him fifty pounds more before leaving Paris. I didn’t then know that 
~he had ever told the soenario to movers else, much less sold it; though I ought 
perhaps to have guessed it.-— 

595 


596 APPENDIX 


me of my only source of income by taking a play on which 
I could always have raised £100.” 

I continued to see Oscar every day until I left Paris. 
Reggie and myself sometimes dined or lunched in his bed- 


room, when he was always very talkative, although he 


looked very ill. On October 25th, my brother Aleck came 
to see him, when Oscar was in particularly good form. 
His sister-in-law, Mrs. Willie, and her husband, Texeira, 
were then passing through Paris on their honeymoon, and 
came at the same time. On this occasion he said he was 
‘“‘dying above his means”? . . . . he would never outlive 
the century . . . . the English people would not stand 
him—he was responsible for the failure of the Exhibition, 
the English having gone away when they saw him there 
so well-dressed and happy . . . . all the French people 
knew this, too, and would not stand him any more... . 
On October the 2oth, Oscar got up for the first time at 
mid-day, and after dinner in the evening insisted on going 
out—he assured me that the doctor had said he might do 
so and would not listen to any protest. 

I had urged him to get up some days before as the 
doctor said he might do so, but he had hitherto refused. — 
We went to a small café in the Latin Quartier, where he 
insisted on drinking absinthe. He walked there and back 
with some difficulty, but seemed fairly well. Only I 
thought he had suddenly aged in face, and remarked to 
Reggie next day how different he looked when up and 
dressed. He appeared comparatively well in bed. ( 
noticed for the first time that his hair was slightly tinged 
with grey. I had always remarked that his hair had never 
altered its colour while he was in Reading;! it retained its 
soft brown tone. You must remember the jests he used 
to make about it, he always amused the warders by say- 
ing that his hair was perfectly white.) Next day I was 
not surprised to find Oscar suffering with a cold and great 
pain in his ear; however, Dr. Tucker said he might go out 
again, and the following afternoon, a very mild day, we 

17 (Frank Harris) noticed at Reading that his hair was getting erey in front and 
at the sides; but when we met later the grey had disappeared. I thought he used 


some dye. T only mention this to show how two good witnesses can differ on a 
plain matter of fact. 


APPENDIX 597 


drove in the Bois. Oscar was much better, but complained 
of giddiness; we returned about 4.30. On Saturday morn- 
ing, November ard, I met the Panseur Hennion (Reggie 
always called him the Libre Penseur), he came every day 
to dress Oscar’s wounds. He asked me if I was a great 
friend or knew Oscar’s relatives. He assured me that 
Oscar’s general condition was very serious—that he could 
not live more than three or four months unless he altered 
his way of life—that I ought to speak to Dr. Tucker, who 
did not realise Oscar’s serious state—that the ear trouble 
was not of much importance in itself, but a grave symptom. 
On Sunday morning I saw Dr. Tucker—he ts a silly, kind, 
excellent man; he said Oscar ought to write more—that he 
was much better, and that his condition would only be- 
come serious when he got up and went about in the usual 
way. 1 begged him to be frank. He promised to ask 
Oscar if he might talk to me openly on the subject of Os- 
car’s health. I saw him on the Tuesday following by ap- 
pointment; he was very vague; and though he endorsed 
Hennion’s view to some extent, said that Oscar was getting 
- well now, though he could not live long unless he stopped 
drinking. On going to see Oscar later in the day I found 
him very agitated. He said he did not want to know what 
the doctor had told me. He said he did not care if he had 
only a short time to live and then went off on to the sub- 
ject of his debts, which I gather amounted to something 
over more than £400.! He asked me to see that at all 
events some of them were paid if I was in a position to 
do so after he was dead; he suffered remorse about some 
of his creditors. Reggie came in shortly afterwards much 
to my relief. Oscar told us that he had had a horrible 
dream the previous night—‘‘ that he had been supping with 
the dead.” Reggie made a very typical response, ‘‘My 
dear Oscar, you were probably the life and soul of the 
party.” This delighted Oscar, who became high-spirited 
again, almost hysterical. I left feeling rather anxious. 
That night [ wrote to Douglas saying that I was com- 
pelled to leave Paris—that the doctor thought Oscar very 
ill—that . . . . ought to pay some of his bills as they 


1 Ross found afterwards that they amounted to £620. 


598 APPENDIX 


worried him very much, and the matter was retarding his 
recovery—a great point made by Dr. Tucker. On Novem- 
ber 2nd, All Souls’ Day, I had gone to Peré la Chaise 
with . ... Oscar was much interested and asked me if I 
had chosen a place for his tomb. He discussed epitaphs 
in a perfectly light-hearted way, and I never dreamt he 
was so near death. 

On Monday, November 12th, I went to the Hotel 
d’Alsace with Reggie to say good-bye, as I was leaving for - 
the Riviera next day. It was late in the evening after 
dinner. Oscar went all over his financial troubles. He had 
just had a letter from Harris about the Smithers claim, 
and was much upset; his speech seemed to me a little 
thick, but he had been given morphia the previous night, 
and he always drank too much champagne during the day. 
He knew I was coming to say good-bye, but paid little 
attention when I entered the room, which at the time I 
thought rather strange; he addressed all his observations 
to Reggie. While we were talking, the post arrived with 
a very nice letter from Alfred Douglas, enclosing a cheque. — 
It was partly in response to my letter I think. Oscar wept 
a little but soon recovered himself. Then we all had a 
friendly discussion, during which Oscar walked around the 
room and declaimed in rather an excited way. About 
10.30 I got up to go. Suddenly Oscar asked Reggie and © 
the nurse to leave the room for a minute, as he wanted to 
say good-bye. He rambled at first about his debts in 
Paris: and then he implored me not to go away, because 
he felt that a great change had come over him during the 
last few days. I adopted a rather stern attitude, as I 
really thought that Oscar was simply hysterical, though 
I knew that he was genuinely upset at my departure. 
Suddenly he broke into a violent sobbing, and said he 
would never see me again because he felt that everything 
was at an end—this very painful incident lasted about 
three-quarters of an hour. 

He talked about various things which I can scarcely 
repeat here. Though it was very harrowing, I really did 
not attach any importance to my farewell, and I did not 
respond to poor Oscar’s emotion as I ought to have done, 


APPENDIX 599 


especially as he said, when I was going out of the room, 
“Look out for some little cup in the hills near Nice where 
I can go when I am better, and where you can come and 
see me often.’’ Those were the last articulate words he 
ever spoke to me. 

I left for Nice the following evening, November 13th. 

During my absence Reggie went every day to see 
Oscar, and wrote me short bulletins every other day. 
Oscar went out several times with him driving, and seemed 
much better. On Tuesday, November 27th, I received 
the first of Reggie’s letters, which I enclose (the others 
came after [ had started), and I started back for Paris; I 
send them because they will give youa very good idea of 
how things stood. I had decided that when I had moved 
my mother to Mentone on the following Friday, I would 
go to Paris on Saturday, but on the Wednesday evening, at 
five-thirty, I got a telegram from Reggie saying, ‘‘ Almost 
hopeless.”” I just caught the express and arrived in Paris 
at 10.20 in the morning. Dr. Tucker and Dr. Kleiss, a 
specialist called in by Reggie, were there. They informed 
me that Oscar could not live for more than two days. His 
appearance was very painful, he had become quite thin, 
the flesh was livid, his breathing heavy. He was trying 
to speak. He was conscious that people were in the room, 
and raised his hand when I asked him whether he under- 
stood. He pressed our hands. I then went in search of a 
priest, and after great difficulty found Father Cuthbert 
Dunn, of the Passionists, who came with me at once and 
administered Baptism and Extreme Unction—Oscar could 
not take the Eucharist. You know I had always promised 
to bring a priest to Oscar when he was dying, and I felt 
rather guilty that I had so often dissuaded him from be- 
coming a Catholic, but you know my reasons for doing so. 
I then sent wires to Frank Harris, to Holman (for com- 
municating with Adrian Hope) and to Douglas. ‘Tucker 
called again later and said that Oscar might linger a few 
days. A garde malade was requisitioned as the nurse had 
been rather overworked. 

Terrible offices had to be carried out into which I need 
not enter. Reggie was a perfect wreck. 


600 APPENDIX 


He and I slept at the Hotel d’Alsace that night in a 
room upstairs. We were called twice by the nurse, whe 
thought Oscar was actually dying. About 5.30 in the 
morning a complete change came over him, the lines of 
the face altered, and I believe what is called the death 
rattle began, but I had never heard anything like it be- 
fore; it sounded like the horrible turning of a crank, and it 
never ceased until the end. His eyes did not respond to the 
light test any longer. Foam and blood came from his 
mouth, and had to be wiped away by someone standing 
by him all the time. At 12 o’clock I went out to get some 
food, Reggiemounting guard. Hewentoutat12.30. From 
1 o'clock we did not leave the room; the painful noise from 
the throat became louder and louder. Reggie and myself 
destroyed letters to keep ourselves from breaking down. 
The two nurses were out, and the proprietor of the hotel 
had come up to take their place; at 1.45 the time-of his 

reathing altered. I went to the bedside and held his 
hand, his pulse began to flutter. He heaved a deep sigh, 


4 t 4 — oo ’ Fins 5 rere 
ee eee ye eee eer ee 


‘tek 


the only natural one I had heard since I arrived, the limbs 


seemed to stretch involuntarily, the breathing came fainter; 
he passed at ro minutes to 2 p. m. exactly. 


After washing and winding the body, and removing the © 


appalling débris which had to be burnt, Reggie and my- 
self and the proprietor started for the Mairie to make the 
official declaration. There is no use recounting the tedious 
experiences which only make me angry to think about. 
The excellent Dupoirier lost his head and complicated 
matters by making a mystery over Oscar’s name, though 
there was a difficulty, as Oscar was registered under the 
name of Melmoth at the hotel, and it is contrary to the 
French law to be under an assumed name in your hotel. 
From 3.30 till 5 p. m. we hung about the Mairie and the 
Commissaire de Police offices. I then got angry and in- 
sisted on going to Gesling, the undertaker to the English 
Embassy, to whom Father Cuthbert had recommended 
me. After settling matters with him I went off to find 
some nuns to watch the body. I thought that in Paris of 
all places this would be quite easy, but it was only after 
incredible difficulties I got two Franciscan sisters. 


APPENDIX 601 


Gesling was most intelligent and promised to call at 
the Hotel d’Alsace at 8 o’clock next morning. While 
Reggie stayed at the hotel interviewing journalists and 
clamorous creditors, I started with Gesling to see officials. 
We did not part till 1.30, so you can imagine the formalities 
and oaths and exclamations and signing of papers. Dying 
in Paris is really a very difficult and expensive luxury for 
a foreigner. 

It was in the afternoon the District Doctor called and 
asked if Oscar had committed suicide or was murdered. 
He would not look at the signed certificates of Kieiss and 
Tucker. Gesling had warned me the previous evening 
that owing to the assumed name and Oscar’s identity, the 
authorities might insist on his body being taken to the 
Morgue. Of course I was appalled at the prospect, it 
_ really seemed the final touch of horror. After examining 
the body, and, indeed, everybody in the hotel, and after 
a series of drinks and unseasonable jests, and a liberal fee, 
the District Doctor consented to sign the permission for 
burial. Then arrived some other revolting official; he 
asked how many collars Oscar had, and the value of his 
umbrella. (This is quite true, and not a mere exaggera- 
tion of mine.) Then various poets and literary people 
called, Raymond de la Tailhade, Tardieu, Charles Sib- 
leigh, "Jehan Rictus, Robert d’ Hut mieres, George Sinclair, 
and various English people, who gave assumed names, to- 
gether with two veiled women. They were all allowed to 
see the body when they signed their names... . 

Iam glad to say dear Oscar looked calm and dignified, 
just as he did when he came.out of prison, and there was 
nothing at all horrible about the body after it had been 
washed. Around his neck was the blessed rosary which 
you gave me, and on the breast a Franciscan medal given 
me by one of the nuns, a few flowers placed there by my- 
self and an anonymous friend who had brought some on 
behalf of the children, though I do not suppose the chil- 
dren know that their father is dead. Of course there was 
the usual crucifix, candles and holy water. 

Gesling had advised me to have the remains placed in 
the coffin at once, as decomposition would begin very 


602 APPENDIX 


rapidly, and at 8.30 in the evening the men came to screw 
it down. An unsuccessful photograph of Oscar was taken 
by Maurice Gilbert at my request, the flashlight did not 
work properly. Henri Davray came just before they had 
put on the lid. He was very kind and nice. On Sunday, © 
the next day, Alfred Douglas arrived, and various people 
whom I do not know called. I expect most of them were 
journalists. On Monday morning at g o’clock, the funeral 
started from the hotel—we all walked to the Church of 
St. Germain des Prés behind the hearse—Alfred Douglas, 
Reggie Turner and myself, Dupoirier, the proprietor of the 
hotel, Henri the nurse, and Jules, the servant of the hotel, 
Dr. Hennion and Maurice Gilbert, together with two 
strangers whom I did not know. After a low mass, said 
by one of the vicaires at the altar behind the sanctuary, 
part of the burial office was read by Father Cuthbert. 
The Suisse told me that there were fifty-six people present 
—there were five ladies in deep mourning—I had ordered 
three coaches only, as I had sent out no official notices, 
being anxious to keep the funeral quiet. The first coach — 
contained Father Cuthbert and the acolyte; the second 
Alfred Douglas, Turner, the proprietor of the hotel, an¢ 
myself; the third contained Madame Stuart Merrill, Paui 
Fort, Henri Davray and Sar Luis; a cab followed centain- 
ing strangers unknown to me. The drive took one hour | 
and a half; the grave is at Bagneux, in a temporary con- 
cession hired in my name—when I am able I shall pur- 
chase ground elsewhere at Pére la Chaise for choice. I 
have not yet decided what to do, or the nature of the 
monument. There were altogether tweaty-four wreaths 
of flowers; some were sent anonymously. The proprietor 
of the hotel supplied a pathetic bead trophy, inscribed, 
‘A mon locataire,”’ and there was another of the same kind 
from ‘‘The service de l’Hotel,” the remaining twenty-two 
were, of course, of real flowers. Wreaths came from, or 
at the request of, the following: Alfred Douglas, More 
Adey, Reginald Turner, Miss Schuster, Arthur Clifton, the 
Mercure de France, Louis Wilkinson, Harold Mellor, Mr. 
and Mrs. Teixiera de Mattos, Maurice Gilbert, and Dr. 
Tucker. At the head of the coffin I placed a wreath of 


APPENDIX 603 


laurels inscribed, ‘‘A tribute to his literary achievements 
and distinction.”’ I tied inside the wreath the following 
names of those who had shown kindness to him during or 
after his imprisonment, “‘ Arthur Humphreys, Max Beer- 
bohm, Arthur Clifton, Ricketts, Shannon, Conder, Roth- 
enstein, Dal Young, Mrs. Leverson, More Adey, Alfred 
Douglas, Reginald Turner, Frank Harris, Louis Wilkinson, 
Mellor, Miss Schuster, Rowland Strong,” and by special re- 
quest a friend who wished to be known as “‘C.B.” 

I can scarcely speak in moderation of the magnanimity, 
humanity and charity of John Dupoirier, the proprietor 
of the Hotel d’Alsace. Just before I left Paris Oscar told 
me he owed him over £1900. From the day Oscar was laid 
up he never said anything about it. He never mentioned 
the subject to me until after Oscar’s death, and then I 
started the subject. He was present at Oscar’s operation, 
and attended to him personally every morning. He paid 
himself for luxuries and necessities ordered by the doctor 
or by Oscar out of his own pocket. I hope that or 
will at any rate pay him the money still owing. Dr. 
Tucker is also owed a large sum of money. He was most 
kind and attentive, although I think he entirely misunder- 
stood Oscar’s case. 

Reggie Turner had the worst time of all in many ways 
—he experienced all the horrible uncertainty and the ap- 
palling responsibility of which he did not know the extent. 
- It will always be a source of satisfaction to those who were 
fend of Oscar, that he had someone like Reggie near him 
during his last days while he was articulate and sensible 
of kindness and attention... . . 


ROBERT Ross. 


CRITICISMS 


By ROBERT Ross 


Vol. I. Page 80 Line 3. I demur very much to your 
statement in this paragraph. Wilde was too much of a 
student of Greek to have learned anything about con- 
troversy from Whistler, No doubt Whistler was more 
nimble and more naturally gifted with the power of repar- 
tee, but when Wilde indulged in controversy with his 
critics, whether he got the best of it or not, he never bor- 
rowed the Whistlerian method. Cf. his controversy with 
Henley over Dorian Gray. 

Then whatever you may think of Ruskin, Wilde learnt 
a great deal about the History and Philosophy of Art 
from him. He learned more from Pater and he was the 
friend and intimate of Burne-Jones long before he knew 
Whistler. I quite agree with your remark that he had 
“no joy in conflict”? and no doubt he had little or no knowl- 
edge of the technique of Art in the modern expert’s sense. 

[There never was a greater master of controversy than 
Whistler, and I believe Wilde borrowed his method 
of making fun of the adversary. Robert Ross’s second 
point is rather controversial. Shaw agrees with me that 
- Wilde never knew anything really of music or of paint- 
ing and neither the history nor the so-called philosophy 
of pa makes one a connoisseur of contemporary masters. 
Le ni 


Page 94. Lastline. For ‘happy candle” read ‘‘ Happy 
Lamp.” It was at the period when oil lamps were put in 
the middle of the dinner table just before the general 
introduction of electric light; by putting ‘‘candle” you 
lose the period. Cf. Du Maurier’s pictures of dinner 
parties in Punch. 


Page 115. I venture to think that you should state 
that Wilde at the end of his story of ‘Mr. W. H.’ definitely 
says that the theory is all nonsense. It always appeared 


605 


606 CRITICISM 


to me a semi-satire of Shakespearean commentary. I 
remember Wilde saying to me after it was published that 
his next Shakespearean book would be a discussion as to 
whether the commentators on Hamlet were mad or only 
pretending to be. I think you take Wilde’s phantasy too ~ 
seriously but I am not disputing whether you are right or 
wrong in your opinion of it; but it strikes me as a little 
solemn when on Page 116 you say that the ‘whole theory is 
completely mistaken’; but you are quite right when you 
say that it did Wilde a great deal of harm. [Ross does 
not seem to realise that if the theory were merely fantas- 
tic the public might be excused for condemning Oscar for 
playing with such a subject. As a matter of fact I re- 
member Oscar defending the theory to me years later 
with all earnestness: that’s why I stated my opinion of it. 
Poh 


Page 142 Line 19. What Wilde said in front of the 
curtain was: ‘‘I have enjoyed this evening immensely.” 
[I seem to remember that Wilde said this; my note was 
written after a dinner a day or two later when Oscar acted 


the whole scene over again and probably elaborated his  — 


effect. I give the elaboration as most characteristic. F.H.] 


Vol. II. Page 357 Line 3. Major Nelson was the 
name of the Governor at Reading prison. He was 
one of the most charming men I ever came across. I 
think he was a little hurt by the ‘‘ Ballad of Reading Gaol,” 
which he fancied rather reflected on him though Major 
Isaacson was the Governor at the time the soldier was 
executed. Isaacson was a perfect monster. Wilde sent 
Nelson copies of his books, ‘‘The Ideal Husband” and 
“The Importance of Being Earnest,’’ which were published 
as you remember after the release, and Nelson acknowl-— 
edged them in a most delightful way. He is dead now. 

[Major Isaacson was the governor who boasted to me 
that he was knocking the nonsense out of Wilde; he 
seemed to me almost inhuman. My report got him re- 
lieved and Nelson appointed in his stead. Nelson was 
an ideal governor. F. H.] 


CRITICISMS 607 


Page 387. Inthe First Edition of the “Ballad of Reading 
Gaol” issued by Methuen I have given the original draft 
of the poem which was in my hands in September 1807, 
long before Wilde rejoined Douglas. I will send you a 
copy of it if you like, but it is much more likely to reach 
you if you order it through Putnam’s in New York as 
they are Methuen’s agents. I would like you to see it 
because it fortifies your opinion about Douglas’ ridiculous 
contention; though I could explode the whole thing by 
Wilde’s letters to myself from Berneval. Certain verses 
were indeed added at Naples. I do not know what you 
will think, but to me they prove the mental decline due to 
the atmosphere and life that Wilde was leading at the 
time. Let us be just and say that perhaps Douglas 
assisted more than he was conscious of in their composi- 
tion. To me they are terribly poor stuff, but then, unlike 
yourself, I am a heretic about the Ballad. 


Page 41x. In fairness to Gide: Gide is describing 
Wilde after he had come back from Naples in the year 
1898, not in 1897, when he had just come out of prison. 


Appendix Page 438 Line 20. Forgive me if I say it, 
but I think your method of sneering at Curzon unworthy 
of Frank Harris. Sneer by all means; but not in that 
‘particular way. 

{Robert Ross is mistaken here: no sneer was intended. 
I added Curzon’s title to avoid giving myself the air of an 
intimate. F. H.] 


Page 488 Line 17. You really are wrong about Mel- 
lor’s admiration for Wilde. He liked his society but 
loathed his writing. I was quite angry in 1900 when 
Mellor came to see me at Mentone (after Wilde’s death, 
of course), when he said he could never see any merit 
whatever in Wilde’s plays or books. However [the point 
is a small one. 


Page 490 Line 6. The only thing I can claim to have 
invented in connection with Wilde were the two titles 


608 CRITICISMS 


“De Profundis” and ‘‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol,” for — 


which let me say I can produce documentary evidence. 
The publication of “De Profundis’? was delayed for a 


month in 1905 because I could not decide on what to 
call it. It happened to catch on but I do not think it~ 


a very good title. 


Page 555 Line 18. Do you happen to have compared 
Douglas’ translation of Salome in Lane’s First edition 
(with Beardsley’s illustrations) with Lane’s Second edition 
(with Beardsley’s illustrations) or Lane’s little editions 
(without Beardsley’s illustrations)? Or have you ever 


compared the aforesaid First edition with the original? — 
Douglas’ translation omits a great deal of the text and — 


is actually wrong as a rendering of the text in many cases. 
I have had this out with a good many people. I believe 
Douglas is to this day sublimely unconscious that his 
text, of which there were never more than 500 copies 


issued in England, has been entirely scrapped; his name 


at my instance was removed from the current issues for 
the very good reason that the new translation is not his, 
But this is merely an observation not a correction. 

[I talked this matter over with Douglas more than once. 


ee, er ee, ee ee ee ee eT ee 


He did not know French well; but he could understand it 


and he was a rarely good translator as his version of a 


Baudelaire sonnet shows. In any dispute as to the value — 


of a word or phrase I should prefer his opinion to Oscar’s. 
But Ross is doubtless right on this point. F. H.] 


Appendix Page 587. Your memory is at fault here. 
The charge against Horatio Lloyd was of a normal kind. 


It was for exposing himself to nursemaids in the gardens of 


the Temple. 
{T hee. corrected this as indeed I have always used 
Ross’s corrections on matters of fact. F. H.] 


Page 596 Line 13. I think there ought’to be a capital — 


“EH” in exhibition to emphasise that it is the 1900 Exhi- 
bition in Paris. 


THE SOUL OF MAN UNDER SOCIALISM 


WHEN I was editing ‘‘The Fortnightly Review,’’ Oscar 
Wilde wrote for me ‘’The Soul of Man Under Socialism.”’ 
On reading it then it seemed to me that he knew very 
little about Socialism and I disliked his airy way of deal- 
ing with a religion he hadn’t taken the trouble to fathom. 
The essay now, appears to me in a somewhat different 
light. Oscar had no deep understanding of Socialism, it 
is true, much less of the fact that in a healthy body cor- 
porate socialism or co-operation would govern all public 
utilities and public services while the individual would 
be left in possession of all such industries as his activity 
can control. 

But Oscar’s genius was such that as soon as he had stated 
one side of the problem he felt that the other side had to 
be considered and so we get from him if not the ideal of 
an ordered state at least apergus of astounding truth and 
value. 

For example he writes: “Socialism . . . by conyerting 
private property into public wealth, and substituting co- 
operation for competition, will restore society to its proper 
condition of a thoroughly healthy organism, and instire 
the material well-being of each member of the community.” 

Then comes the return on himself: ‘But for the full de- 
velopment of Life. . . something moreis needed. What 
is needed is Individualism.” 

And the ideal is always implicit: ‘“‘Private property has 
led Individualism entirely astray. It has made gain not 
growth its aim.” 

Humor too is never far away: ‘Only one class thinks 
more about money than the rich and that is the poor.” 

His short stay in the United States also benefited him. 

. . “Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the 
people by the people for the people. It has been found 
out.” 

Taken all in all a provocative delightful essay which like 
Salome in the esthetic field marks the end of his Lehrjahre 
and the beginning of his work as a master. 


609 


A LAST WORD 


In the couple of years that have elapsed since the first 
edition of this book was published, I have received many 
letters from readers asking for information about Wilde ~ 
which I have omitted to give. I have been threatened with 
prosecution and must not speak plainly; but something 
may be said in answer to those who contend that Oscar 
might have brought forward weightier arguments in his 
defence than are to be found in Chapter XXIV. Asa 
matter of fact I have made him more persuasive than he 
was. When Oscar declared (as recorded on page 496) that 
his weakness was ‘‘consistent with the highest ideal of hu- 
manity if not a characteristic of it,’’ I asked him: “would he 
make the same defence for the Lesbians?” He turned aside 
showing the utmost disgust in face and words, thus in my 
opinion giving his whole case away. 

He could have made a better defence. He might have 
said that as we often eat or drink or smoke for pleasure, so 
we may indulge in other sensualities. If he had argued 
that his sin was comparatively venial and so personal- 
peculiar that it carried with it no temptation to the normal 
man, I should not have disputed his point. 

Moreover, love at its highest is independent of sex and 
sensuality. Since Luther we have been living ina centrif- 
ugal movement, in a wild individualism where all ties of 
love and affection have been loosened, and now that the 
centripetal movement has come into power we shall find 
that in another fifty years or so friendship and love will 
win again to honor and affinities of all sorts will pro- 
claim themselves without shame and without fear. In 
this sense Oscar might have regarded himself as a fore- 
runner and not as a survival or “sport.” And it may 
well be that some instinctive feeling of this sort was at 
the back of his mind though too vague to be formulated 
in words. For even in our dispute (see Page 500) he 
pleaded that the world was becoming more tolerant, which 
one hopes, is true. To become more tolerant of the faults 
of others is the first lesson in the religion of Humanity. 


The End. 


610 


A letter from Lord Alfred Douglas to Oscar Wilde that | 
I reproduce here speaks for itself and settles once for all, 
I imagine, the question of their relations. Had Lord 
Alfred Douglas not denied the truth and posed as Oscar 
Wilde’s patron, I should never have published this letter 
though it was given to me to establish the truth. This 
letter was written between Oscar’s first and second trial; 
ten days later Oscar Wilde was sentenced to two years 
imprisonment with hard labor. 
FRANK HARRIS. 


HOTEL DES DEUX MONDES 
22, Avenue de l’Opera, 22 
PARIS 
Wednesday, May 15, 1895. 
(My darling Oscar: 
_ Have just arrived here. 

It seems too dreadful to be here without you, but I hope 
you will join me next week. Dieppe was too awful for 
anything; it is the most depressing place in the world, 
even Petits Chevaux was not to be had as the Casino was 
closed. They are very nice here, and I can stay as long 
as I like without paying my bill which is a good thing, 
as I am quite penniless. 

The proprietor is very nice and most sympathetic; he 
asked after you at once and expressed his regret and 
indignation at the treatment you had received. I shall 
have to send this by a cab to the Gare du Nord to catch, 
the post as I want you to get it first post to-morrow. , 
+ I am going to see if I can find Robert Sherard to- 
morrow if he is in Paris, 

Charlie is with me and sends you his best love. 

I had a long letter from More (Adey) this morning 
about you. Do keep up your spirits, my dearest darling. 
T continue to think of you day and night and I send you 
all my love. | 

I am always your own loving and devoted Doy. 

Bost. 
611 


This letter now published for the first time is the most 
characteristic I received from Oscar Wilde in the years 
after his imprisonment. Jt dates I think from the winter 
of 1897, say some eight months after his release. F. H. 


HOTEL DE NICE 
Rue des Beaux Arts 
PARIS 


My dear Frank: 

I cannot express to you how deeply touched I am by 
your letter—it is une vraie poignee de main. 1 simply 
long to see you and to come again in contact with your 
strong sane wonderful personality. 

I cannot understand about the poem (Tihe Ballad of 
Reading Gaol) my publisher tells me that, as I had begged » 
him to do, he sent the two first copies to the “Saturday” 
and the “Chronicle’—and the also tells me that Arthur. 
Symons told him ‘he had written especially to you to ask 
you to allow him to do a signed article. é 

I suppose publishers are untrustworthy. They cer- 
tainly always look it. I hope some notice will appear, as — 
your paper, or rather yourself, is a great force in London. 
and when you speak men listen, . 

I of course feel that the poem is too autobiographical: 
and that real experience are alien things that should never 
influence one, but it was wrung out of me, a cry of pain, | 
the cry of Marsyas, not the song of Apollo. Still, there 
are some good things in it. I feel as if I had made a 
sonnet out of skilly, and that is something, 

When you return from Monte Carlo please let me 
know. I long to dine wit you. 

As regards a comedy, my dear Frank, I have lost the 
mainspring of life and art—la joie de vivre—it is dread- — 
ful. I have pleasures and passions, but the joy of life 
is gone. I am going under, the Morgue yawns for me. 
I go and look at my zinc bed there. After all I had a 
wonderful life, which is, I fear, over. But I must dine 
once with you first. | 

Ever yours, | 
Oscar WILDE. 
612 


FI 
ut H 
{= 


’ 
Maes 
oe 


wane 


MEMORIES OF OSCAR WILDE 
BY G. BERNARD SHAW 


ree . = 
ee é 
bo: nv 
See fa 

‘ fade 

ee 

, ie: 

; 2 Os 
[as] 


INTRODUCTION 


George Bernard Shaw ordered a special copy 
of this book of mine: ‘Oscar Wilde: His Life 
and Confessions,” as soon as it was announced. 
I sent it to him and asked him to write me his 
opinion of the book. 

In due course I received the following MSS. 
from him in which he tells me what he thinks of 
my work:—‘the best life of Wilde,..... 
Wilde’s memory will have to stand or fall by it”; 
and then goes on to relate all his own meetings 
with Wilde, the impressions they made upon 
him and his judgment of Wilde as a writer and 
as a man. 

He has given himself this labor, he says, in 
order that I may publish his views in the 
Appendix to my book if I think fit—an ex- 
ample, not only of Shaw’s sympathy and gen- 
erosity, but of his light way of treating his own 
kindness. 

I am delighted to be able to put Shaw’s con- 
sidered judgment of Wilde beside my own for 
the benefit of my readers. For if there had 

3 


4 INTRODUCTION 


been anything I had misseen or misjudged in 
Wilde, or any prominent trait of his character I 
had failed to note, the sin, whether of omission or 
commission, couldscarcely have escaped this other 
pair of keen eyes. Now indeed this biography 
of Wilde may be regarded as definitive. 

Shaw says his judgment of Wilde is severer 
than mine—‘“‘far sterner,” are his words; but I 
am not sure that this is an exact estimate. 

While Shaw accentuates Wilde’s snobbish- 
ness, he discounts his “Irish charm,” and though 
he praises highly his gifts as dramatist and 
story-teller he lays little stress on his genuine 
kindness of nature and the courteous smiling 
ways which made him so incomparable a com- 
panion and intimate. 

On the other hand he excuses Wilde’s perver- 
sion as pathological, as hereditary “giantism,” 


and so lightens the darkest shadows just as he 


has toned down the lights. 


I never saw anything abnormal in Oscar Wilde 


either in body or soul save an extravagant sensu- 
ality and an absolute adoration of beauty and 
comeliness; and so, with his own confessions and 
practises before me, I had to block him in, to 
use painters’ jargon, with black shadows, and 
was delighted to find high lights to balance them 
—-lights of courtesies, graces and unselfish kind- 
ness of heart. 


INTRODUCTION 5 


On the whole I think our two pictures are 
very much alike and I am sure a good many 
readers will be almost as grateful to Shaw for 
his collaboration and corroboration as I am. 


POSTSCRIPT 


Since writing this foreword I have received 
the proof of his contribution which I had sent 
to Shaw. He has made some slight corrections 
in the text which, of course, have been carried 
out, and some comments besides on my notes as 
Editor. These, too, | have naturally wished to 
use and so, to avoid confusion, have inserted 
them in italics and with his initials. I hope the 
sequence will be clear to the reader. 


MY MEMORIES OF OSCAR WILDE 
By Bernarp SHAW 


My Dear Harris:— 

“TY have an interesting letter of yours to 
answer; but when you ask me to exchange 
biographies, you take an unfair advantage of 
the changes of scene and bustling movement of 
your own adventures. My autobiography 
would be like my best plays, fearfully long, and 
not divided into acts. Just consider this life 
of Wilde which you have just sent me, and 
which I finished ten minutes agc after putting 
aside everything else to read it at one stroke. 

“Why was Wilde so good a subject for a 
biography that none of the previous attempts 
which you have just wiped out are bad? Just 
because his stupendous laziness simplified his 
life almost as if he knew instinctively that there 
must be no episodes to spoil the great situation 
at the end of the last act but one. It was a well 
made life in the Scribe sense. It was as simple 
as the life of Des Grieux, Manon Lescaut’s lover; 
and it beat that by omitting Manon and mak- 
ing Des Grieux his own lover and his own hero. 

“Des Grieux was a worthless rascal by all 
conventional standards; and we forgive him 
7 


8 MEMORIES OF OSCAR WILDE 


everything. We think we forgive him because 
he was unselfish and loved greatly. Oscar 
seems to have said: ‘I will love nobody: I will 
be utterly selfish; and I will be not merely a 
rascal but a monster; and you shall forgive me 
everything. In other words, I will reduce 
your standards to absurdity, not by writing 
them down, though I could do that so well 
—in fact, have done it—but by actually liv- 
ing them down and dying them down.’ 

“However, I mustn’t start writing a book to 
you about Wilde: I must just tumble a few 
things together and tell you them. To take 
things in the order of your book, I can remember 
only one occasion on which I saw Sir William 
Wilde, who, by the way, operated on my father 
to correct a squint, and overdid the correction 
so much that my father squinted the other 
way all the rest of his life. To this day I never 
notice a squint: it is as normal to me as a nose 
Ora tail nat. 

““T was a boy at a concert in the Antient Con- 
cert Rooms in Brunswick Street in Dublin. 
Everybody was in evening dress; and—unless I 
am mixing up this concert with another (in 
which case I doubt if the Wildes would have 
been present)—the Lord Lieutenant was there 
with his blue waistcoated courtiers. Wilde was 
dressed in snuffy brown; and as he had the sort 


MEMORIES OF OSCAR WILDE 9 


of skin that never looks clean, he produced a 
dramatic effect beside Lady Wilde (in full fig) 
of being, like Frederick the Great, Beyond Soap 
and Water, as his Nietzschean son was beyond 
Good and Evil. He was currently reported 
to have a family in every farmhouse; and the 
wonder was that Lady Wilde didn’t mind— 
evidently a tradition from the Travers case, 
which I did not know about until I read your 
account, as I was only eight in 1864. 

“Lady Wilde was nice to me in London dur- 
ing the desperate days between my arrival in 
1876 and my first earning of an income by my 
pen in 188s, or rather until, a few years earlier, 
I threw myself into Socialism and cut myself 
contemptuously loose from everything of which 
her at-homes—themselves desperate affairs 
enough, as you saw for yourself—were part. If 
- was at two or three of them; and I once dined 
with her in company with an ex-tragedy queen 
named Miss Glynn, who, having no visible ex- 
ternal ears, reared a head like a turnip. Lady 
Wilde talked about Schopenhauer; and Miss 
Glynn told me that Gladstone formed his ora- 
torical style on Charles Kean. 

“T ask myself where and how I came across 
Lady Wilde; for we had no social relations in the 
Dublin days. ‘The explanation must be that my 
sister, then a very attractive girl who sang beau- 


IO MEMORIES OF OSCAR WILDE 


tifully, had met and made some sort of innocent 
conquest of both Oscar and Willie. I met 
Oscar once at one of the at-homes; and he 


came and spoke to me with an evident intention | 


of being specially kind to me. We put each 
other out frightfully; and this odd difficulty 
persisted between us to the very last, even when 
we were no longer mere boyish novices and had 
become men of the world with plenty of skill in 
social intercourse. I saw him very seldom, as 
I avoided literary and artistic society like the 
plague, and refused the few invitations I re- 
ceived to go into society with burlesque ferocity, 


so as to keep out of it without offending people 


past their willingness to indulge me as a priv- 
ileged lunatic. 
“The last time I saw him was at that tragic 


luncheon of yours at the Café Royal; and I am — 


quite sure our total of meetings from first to 
last did not exceed twelve, and may not have 
exceeded six. 

“T definitely recollect six: (1) At the at-home 
aforesaid. (2) At Macmurdo’s house in Fitzroy 
Street in the days of the Century Guild and its 
paper ‘The Hobby Horse.’ (3) At a meet- 
ing somewhere in Westminster at which | 
delivered an address on Socialism, and at 
which Oscar turned up and spoke. Robert 
Ross surprised me greatly by telling me, long 


ae ee ae 


MEMORIES OF OSCAR WILDE if 


after Oscar’s death, that it was this address of 
mine that moved Oscar to try his hand at a 
similar feat by writing ‘The Soul of Man 
Under Socialism.’ (4) A chance meeting near 
the stage door of the Haymarket Theatre, at 
which our queer shyness of one another made 
our resolutely cordial and appreciative conver- 
sation so difficult that our final laugh and shake- 
hands was almost a reciprocal confession. (5) A 
really pleasant afternoon we spent together on 
catching one another in a place where our pres- 
ence was an absurdity. It was some exhibition 
in Chelsea: a naval commemoration, where there 
was a replica of Nelson’s Victory and a set of 
P. & O. cabins which made one seasick by mere 
association of ideas. I don’t know why I went 
or why Wilde went; but we did; and the ques- 
tion what the devil we were doing in that 
galley tickled us both. It was my sole experi- 
ence of Oscar’s wonderful gift as a raconteur. 
I remember particularly an amazingly elaborate 
story which you have no doubt heard from him: 
an example of the cumulation of a single effect, 
as in Mark Twain’s story of the man who was 
persuaded to put lightning conductor after 
lightning conductor at every possible point on 
his roof until a thunderstorm came and all the 
lightning in the heavens went for his house and 
wiped it out. 3 


12 MEMORIES OF OSCAR WILDE 


“Oscar’s much more carefully and elegantly 
worked out story was of a young man who 
invented a theatre stall which economized space 


by ingenious contrivances which were all de- 


scribed. A friend of his invited twenty million- 
aires to meet him at dinner so that he might 
interest them in the invention. The young 
man convinced them completely by his demon- 
stration of the saving in a theatre holding, in 
ordinary seats, six hundred people, leaving them 
eager and ready to make his fortune. Un- 
fortunately he went on to calculate the annual 
saving in all the theatres of the world; then in all 


———. — = 


the churches of the world; then in all the legis- — 


latures; estimating finally the incidental and 
moral and religious effects of the invention until 
at the end of an hour he had estimated a profit 
of several thousand millions: the climax of 
course being that the millionaires folded their 
tents and silently stole away, leaving the ruined 
inventor a marked man for life. | 
“Wilde and I[ got on extraordinarily well on 
this occasion. I had not to talk myself, but to 
listen to a man telling me stories better than I 
could have told them. We did not refer to 
Art, about which, excluding literature from the 
definition, he knew only what could be picked 
up by reading about it. He was in a tweed suit 
and low hat like myself, and had been detected 


MEMORIES OF OSCAR WILDE 13 


and had detected me in the act of clandestinely 
spending a happy day at Rosherville Gar- 
dens instead of pontificating in his frock coat 
and so forth. And he had an audience on 
whom not one of his subtlest effects was lost. 
And so for once our meeting was a success; and 
I understood why Morris, when he was dying 
slowly, enjoyed a visit from Wilde more than 
from anybody else, as I understand why you 
say in your book that you would rather have 
Wilde back than any friend you have ever 
talked to, even though he was incapable of 
friendship, though not of the most touching 
kindness! on occasion. 

“Our sixth meeting, the only other one I can 
remember, was the one at the Cafe Royal. On 
that occasion he was not too preoccupied with 
his danger to be disgusted with me because I, 
who had praised his first plays handsomely, had 
turned traitor over ‘The Importance of Being 
Fiarnest.’ Clever as it was, it was his first 
really heartless play. In the others the chivalry 
of the eighteenth century Irishman and the 
romance of the disciple of Théophile Gau- 
tier (Oscar was really old=fashioned in the Irish 
way, except as a critic of morals) not only gave 
a certain kindness and gallantry to the serious 
passages and to the handling of the women, but 


1 Excellent analysis. [Ed.] 


I4 MEMORIES OF OSCAR WILDE 


provided that proximity of emotion without 
which laughter, however irresistible, is destruc- 
tive and sinister. In ‘The Importance of 
Being Earnest’ this had vanished; and the play, 
though extremely funny, was essentially hateful. 
I had no idea that Oscar was going to the dogs, 
and that this represented a real degeneracy pro- 
duced by his debaucheries. I thought he was 
still developing; and I hazarded the unhappy 
guess that ‘The Importance of Being Earnest’ 
was in idea a young work written or projected 
long before under the influence of Gilbert and 
furbished up for Alexander as a potboiler. At 
the Café Royal that day I calmly asked him 
whether I was not right. He indignantly re- 
pudiated my guess, and said loftily (the only 
time he ever tried on me the attitude he took 
to John Gray and his more abject disciples) that 
he was disappointed in me. I suppose I said, 
‘Then what on earth has happened to you?’ 
but I recollect nothing more on that subject 
except that we did not quarrel over it. | 


‘““\When he was sentenced I spent a railway _ 


Journey on a Socialist lecturing excursion to 
the North drafting a petition for his release. 
After that | met Willie Wilde at a theatre which 
I think must have been the Duke of York’s, 
because I connect it vaguely with St. Martin’s 
Lane. I spoke to him about the petition, asking 


MEMORIES OF OSCAR WILDE 15 


him whether anything of the sort was being 
done, and warning him that though I and 
Stewart Headlam would sign it, that would be 
no use, as we were two notorious cranks, and 
our names would by themselves reduce the peti- 
tion to absurdity and do Oscar more harm than 
good. Willie cordially agreed, and added, with 
maudlin pathos and an inconceivable want of 
tact: ‘Oscar was NOT a man of bad character: 
you could have trusted him with a woman any- 
where.’ He convinced me, as you discovered 
later, that signatures would not be obtainable; 
so the petition project dropped; and I don’t 
know what became of my draft. 

“When Wilde was in Paris during his last 
phase I made a point of sending him inscribed 
copies of all my books as they came out; and he 
did the same to me. 

“In writing about Wilde and Whistler, in the 
days when they were treated as witty -triflers, 
and called Oscar and Jimmy in print, I always 
made a point of taking them seriously and with 
scrupulous good manners. Wilde on his part 
also made a point of recognizing me as a man of 
distinction by his manner, and repudiating the 
current estimate of me as a mere jester. This 
was not the usual reciprocal-admiration trick: 
I believe he was sincere, and felt indignant at 
what he thought was a vulgar underestimate 


16 MEMORIES OF OSCAR WILDE 


of me; and I had the same feeling about him. 
My. impulse to rally to him in his misfortune, 
and my disgust at ‘the man Wilde’ scurrilities 
of the newspapers, was irresistible: I don’t quite 
know why; for my charity to his perversion, 
and my recognition of the fact that it does not 
imply any general depravity or coarseness of 
character, came to me through reading and ob- 
servation, not through sympathy. 

“T have all the normal violent repugnance to 
homosexuality—if it is really normal, which 
nowadays one is sometimes provoked to doubt. 

“Also, I was in no way predisposed to like 
him: he was my fellow-townsman, and a very 
prime specimen of the sort of fellow-townsman 
I most loathed: to wit, the Dublin snob. His 
Irish charm, potent with Englishmen, did not 
exist for me; and on the whole it may be claimed 
for him that he got no regard from me that he 
did not earn. 

“What first established a friendly feeling in 
me was, unexpectedly enough, the affair of the 
Chicago anarchists, whose Homer you consti- 
tuted yourself by ‘The Bomb.’ I tried to get 
some literary men in London, all heroic rebels 
and skeptics on paper, to sign a memorial asking 
for the reprieve of these unfortunate men. The 
only signature I got was Oscar’s. It was a 
completely disinterested act on his part; and 


MEMORIES OF OSCAR WILDE Ly 


it secured my distinguished consideration for 
him for the rest of his dife. 

“To return for a moment to Lady Wilde. You 
know that there is a disease called giantism, 
caused by ‘a certain morbid process in the 
sphenoid bone of the skull—viz., an excessive 
development of the anterior lobe of the pituitary 
body’ (this is from the nearest encyclopedia). 
‘When this condition does not become active 
until after the age of twenty-five, by which time 
the long bones are consolidated, the result is 
acromegaly, which chiefly manifests itself in an 
enlargement of the hands and feet.’ I never 
saw Lady Wilde’s feet; but her hands were 
enormous, and never went straight to their aim 
when they grasped anything, but minced about, 
feeling for it. And the gigantic splaying of her 
palm was reproduced in her lumbar region. 

“Now Oscar was an overgrown man, with 
something not quite normal about his bigness 
— something that made Lady Colin Campbell, 
who hated him, describe him as ‘that great 
white caterpillar.’ You yourself describe the 
disagreeable impression he made on you physi- 
cally, in spite of his fine eyes and style. Well, 
I have always maintained that Oscar was a giant 
in the pathological sense, and that this explains 
a good deal of his weakness. 

“I think you have affectionately underrated 


18 MEMORIES OF OSCAR WILDE 


his snobbery, mentioning only the pardonable 
and indeed justifiable side of it; the love of fine 
names and distinguished associations and luxury 
and good manners.” You say repeatedly, and 
on certain planes, truly, that he was not bitter 
and did not use his tongue to wound people. 
But this is not true on the snobbish plane. On 
one occasion he wrote about T. P. O’Connor 
with deliberate, studied, wounding insolence, 
with his Merrion Square Protestant preten- 
tiousness in full cry against the Catholic. He 
repeatedly declaimed against the vulgarity of 
the British journalist, not as you or I might, 
but as an expression of the odious class feeling 
that is itself the vilest vulgarity. He made 
the mistake of not knowing his place. He 
objected to be addressed as Wilde, declaring 
that he was Oscar to his intimates and Mr. Wilde 
to others, quite unconscious of the fact that he 
was imposing on the men with whom, as a critic 
and journalist, he had to live and work, the 
alternative of granting him an intimacy he had — 


2T had touched on the evil side of his snobbery, I thought, by say- 
ing that it was only famous actresses and great ladies that he ever 
talked about, and in telling how he loved to speak of the great 
houses such as Clumber to which he had been invited, and by half 
a dozen other hints scattered through my book. I had attacked Eng- 
lish snobbery so strenuously in my book on “The Man Shakespeare,” 
had resented its influence on the finest English intelligence so bit- 
terly, that I thought if I again laid stress on it in Wilde, people 
would think I was crazy on the subject. But he was a snob, both 
by nature and training, and I understand by snob what Shaw evi- 
dently understands by it here. 


MEMORIES OF OSCAR WILDE 19 


no right to ask or a deference to which he had 
no claim. The vulgar hated him for snubbing 
them; and the valiant men damned his impu- 
dence and cut him. Thus he was left with 
a band of devoted satellites on the one hand, 
and a dining-out connection on the other, with 
here and there a man of talent and personality 
enough to command his respect, but utterly with- 
out that fortifying body of acquaintance among 
plain men in which a man must move as himself 
a plain man, and be Smith and Jones and Wilde 
and Shaw and Harris instead of Bosie and Rob- 
bie and Oscar and Mister. This is the sort of 
folly that does not last forever in a man of Wilde’s 
ability; but it lasted long enough to prevent 
Oscar laying any solid social foundations. 
“Another difficulty I have already hinted at. 
Wilde started as an apostle of Art; and in that 
capacity he was 2 humbug. The notion that a 
Portora boy, passed on to I..C.D. and thence to 
Oxford and spending his vacations in Dublin, 
could without special circumstances have any 
genuine intimacy with music and painting, is to 


8 ‘The reason that Oscar, snobbish as he was, and admirer of Eng- 
land and the English as he was, could not lay any solid social foun- 
dations in England was, in my opinion, his intellectual interests and 
his intellectual superiority to the men he met. No one with a fine 
mind devoted to things of the spirit is capable of laying solid social 
foundations in England. Shaw, too, has no solid social foundations 
in that country. 


This passing shot at English society serves it right. Yet able men 
have found niches in London. Where was Oscar’s?—G. B, 8, 


20 MEMORIES OF OSCAR WILDE 


me ridiculous. When Wilde was at Portora, 
I was at home in a house where impostant 
musical works, including several typical master- 
pieces, were being rehearsed from the point of 
blank amateur ignorance up to fitness for public 
performance. I could whistle them from the 
first bar to the last as a butcher’s boy whistles 
music hall songs, before | was twelve. The 
toleration of popular music—Strauss’s waltzes, 
for instance—was to me positively a painful ac- 
quirement, a sort of republican duty. 

“Twas so fascinated by painting that I haunted 
the National Gallery, which Doyle had made 
perhaps the finest collection of its size in the 
world; and I longed for money to buy painting 
materials with. This afterwards saved me from 
starving: it was as a critic of music and painting 
in the World that I won through my ten years of 
journalism before I finished up with you on the 
Saturday Review. I could make deaf stock- 
brokers read my two pages on music, the alleged 
joke being that I knew nothing about it. ‘The 
real joke was that I knew all about it. 

“Now it was quite evident to me, as it was to 


*T had already marked it down to put in this popular edition of my 
book that Wilde continually pfetended to a knowledge of music which he 
had not got. He could hardly tell one tune from another, but he loved 
to talk of that ‘‘scarlet thing of Dvorak,’’ hoping in this way to be accepted 
as a real critic of music, when he knew nothing about it and cared even 
less. His eulogies of music and painting betrayed him continually 
though he did not know it. 


MEMORIES OF OSCAR WILDE apt 


Whistler and Beardsley, that Oscar knew no 
more about pictures ® than anyone of his general 
culture and with his opportunities can pick up 
as he goes along. He could be witty about 
Art, as I could be witty about engineering; but 
that is no use when you have to seize and hold 
the attention and interest of people who really 
love music and painting. ‘Therefore, Oscar 
was handicapped by a false start, and got a 
reputation ° for shallowness and insincerity which 
he never retrieved until it was too late. 
“Comedy: the criticism of morals and man- 
ners viva voce, was his real forte. When he settled 
down to that he was great. But, as you found 
when you approached Meredith about him, his 
initial mistake had produced that ‘rather low 
opinion of Wilde’s capacities,’ that ‘deep- 
rooted contempt for the showman in_ him,’ 
which persisted as a first impression and will 
persist until the last man who remembers his 
esthetic period has perished. The world has 
been in some ways so unjust to him that one 
must be careful not to be unjust to the world. 
“In the preface on education, called ‘Par- 
ents and Children,’ to my volume of plays 


5 TI touched upon Oscar’s ignorance of art sufficiently I think, when I 
said in my book that he had learned all he knew of art and of contro- 
versy from Whistler, and that his lectures on the subject, even after 
sitting at the feet of the Master, were almost worthless. 

§ Perfectly true, and a notable instance of Shaw’s insight. 


22 MEMORIES OF OSCAR WILDE 


beginning with Misalhance, there is a section 
headed ‘Artist Idolatry,’ which is really about 
Wilde. Dealing with ‘the powers enjoyed by 
brilliant persons who are also connoisseurs in 
art,’ I say, ‘the influence they can exercise on 
young people who have been brought up in the 
darkness and wretchedness of a home without 
art, and in whom a natural bent towards art 
has always been baffled and snubbed, is incred- 
ible to those who have not witnessed and under- 


stood it. He (or she) who reveals the world — 


of art to them opens heaven to them. They 
become satellites, disciples, worshippers of the 
apostle. Now the apostle may bea voluptuary 
without much conscience. Nature may have 
given him enough virtue to suffice in a reason- 
able environment. But this allowance may not 
be enough to defend him against the temptation 
and demoralization of finding himself a little god 
on the strength of what ought to be a quite ordi- 
nary culture. He may find adorers in all direc- 
tions in our uncultivated society among people 
of stronger character than himself, not one of 
whom, if they had been artistically educated, 
would have had anything to learn from him, or 
regarded him as in any way extraordinary apart 
from his actual achievements as an artist. Tar- 
tufe is not always a priest. Indeed, he is not al- 
ways a rascal: he is often a weak man absurdly 


" z > r » jit tee oe 
" ‘ i ee ee es ee eae ee ea en Me SN Nan eg 
ee ee ee ee re a wey ee eee - ee Pe) ee © . ~ «F ‘wget 


MEMORIES OF OSCAR WILDE 23 


credited with omniscience and perfection, and 
taking unfair advantages only because they are 
offered to him and he is too weak to refuse. 
Give everyone his culture, and no one will offer 
him more than his due.’ 

“That paragraph was the outcome of a walk 
and talk I had one afternoon at Chartres with 

’ Robert Ross. 

“You reveal Wilde as a weaker man than I 
thought him: I still believe that his fierce Irish 
pride had something to do with his refusal to 
run away from the trial. But in the main your 
evidence is conclusive. It was part of his 
tragedy that people asked more moral strength 
from him that he could bear the burden of, 
because they made the very common mistake— 
of which actors get the benefit—of regarding 
style as evidence of strength, just as in the case 
of women they are apt to regard paint as evi- 
dence of beauty. Now Wilde was so in love 
with style that he never realized the danger of 
biting off more than he could chew: in other 
words, of putting up more style than his 
matter would carry. Wise kings wear shabby 
clothes, and leave the gold lace to the drum 
major. 

“You do not, unless my memory is betray- 
ing me as usual, quite recollect the order of 
events just before the trial. That day at the 


24 MEMORIES OF OSCAR WILDE 


Café Royal, Wilde said he had come to ask you 
to go into the witness box next day and testify 
that Dorian Gray was a highly moral work. 
Your answer was something like this: ‘For God’s 
sake, man, put everything on that plane out of 
your head. You don’t realize what is going to 
happen to you. It is not going to be a matter of 
clever talk about your books. They are going 
to bring up a string of witnesses that will put 
art and literature out of the question. Clarke 
will throw up his brief. He will carry the case 
to a certain point; and then, when he sees the 
avalanche coming, he will back out and leave 
you in the dock. What you have to do is to 
cross to France to-night. Leave a letter saying 
that you cannot face the squalor and horror of 
a law case; that you are an artist and unfitted 
for such things. Don’t stay here clutching at 
straws like testimonials to Dorian Gray. I tell 
you I know. I know what is going to happen. 
I know Clarke’s sort. I know what evidence 
they have got. You must go.’ 

“Tt was nouse. Wilde was ina curious double 
temper. He made no pretence either of inno- 
cence or of questioning the folly of his proceed- 
ings against Queensberry. But he had an in- 
fatuate haughtiness as to the impossibility of 
his retreating, and as to his right to dictate 
your course. Douglas sat in silence, a haughty 


MEMORIES OF OSCAR WILDE 25 


indignant silence, copying Wilde’s attitude as 
all Wilde’s admirers did, but quite probably 
influencing Wilde as you suggest, by the copy. 
Oscar finally rose with a mixture of impatience 
and his grand air,and walked out with the re- 
mark that he had now found out who were his 
real friends; and Douglas followed him, absurdly 
smaller, and imitating his walk, like a curate 
following an archbishop.’ You remember it 
the other way about; but just consider this. 
Douglas was in the wretched position of having 
ruined Wilde merely to annoy his father, and of 
having attempted it so idiotically that he had 
actually prepared a triumph for him. He was, 
besides, much the youngest man present, and 
looked younger than he was. You did not 
make him welcome: as far as I recollect you did 
not greet him by a word ornod. If he had given 
the smallest provocation or attempted to take 

the lead in any way, I should not have given 
twopence for the chance of your keeping your 
temper. And Wilde, even in his ruin—which, 
however, he did not yet fully realize—kept his 
air of authority on questions of taste and con- 


7 This is an inimitable picture, but Shaw’s fine sense of comedy has 
misled him. The scene took place absolutely as I recorded it. Douglas 
went out first saying—‘‘ Your telling him to run away shows that you 
are no friend of Oscar’s.””’ Then Oscar got up to follow him. He said 
good-bye to Shaw, adding a courteous word or two. As he turned to the 
door I got up and said:—“I hope you do not doubt my friendship; you 
fave no reason to.” 

“T do not think this is friendly of you, Frank,” he said, and went on out. 


26 MEMORIES OF OSCAR WILDE 


duct. It was practically impossible under such 
circumstances that Douglas should have taken 
the stage in any way. Everyone thought him 
a horrid little brat; but I, not having met him 
before to my knowledge, and having some sort 
of flair for his literary talent, was curious to hear 
what he had to say for himself. But, except to 
echo Wilde once or twice, he said nothing. You 
are right in effect, because it was evident that 
Wilde was in his hands, and was really echoing 
him. But Wilde automatically kept the promp- 
ter off the stage and himself in the middle of it. 
““What your book needs to complete it is a 
portrait of yourself as good as your portrait of 
Wilde. Oscar was not combative, though he 
was supercilious in his early pose. When his 
snobbery was not in action, he liked to make 
people devoted to him and to flatter them ex- 
quisitely with that end. Mrs. Calvert, whose 
great final period as a stage old woman began 
with her appearance in my Arms and the Man, 
told me one day, when apologizing for being, as 
she thought, a bad rehearser, that no author had 
ever been so nice to her except Mr. Wilde. 
‘‘Pugnacious people, if they did not actually 


8] am sure Douglas took the initiative and walked out first. 


I have no doubt you are right, and that my vision of the exit is 
really a reminiscence of the entrance. In fact, now that you prompt 
my memory, I recall quite distinctly that Douglas, who came in as 
the follower, went out as the leader, and that the last word was 
spoken by Wilde after he had gone.—G. B. S. 


MEMORIES OF OSCAR WILDE 27 


terrify Oscar, were at least the sort of people he 
could not control, and whom he feared as possibly 
able to coerce him. You suggest that the 
Queensberry pugnacity was something that 
Oscar could not deal with successfully. But 
how in that case could Oscar have felt quite 
safe with you? You were more pugnacious 
than six Queensberrys rolled into one. When 
people asked, “‘What has Frank Harris been?’ 
the usual reply was, ‘Obviously a pirate from 
the Spanish Main.’ 

“Oscar, from the moment he gained your 
attachment, could never have been afraid of 
what you might do to him,as he was sufficient of 
a connoisseur in Blut Bruderschaft to appreciate 
yours; but he must always have been mortally 
afraid of what you might door say to his friends.?® 

“You had quite an infernal scorn for nineteen 
out of twenty of the men and women you met 
in the circles he most wished to propitiate; and 
nothing could induce you to keep your knife in 
its sheath when they jarred on you. The 
Spanish Main itself would have blushed rosy 
red at your language when classical invective 
did not suffice to express your feelings. 

“Tt may be that if, say, Edmund Gosse had 


® This insight on Shaw’s part makes me smile because it is absolutely 
true. Oscar commended Bosie Douglas to me again and again and 
again, begged me to be nice to him if we ever met by chance; but I refused 
to meet him for months and months. ; 


Sa 


28 MEMORIES OF OSCAR WILDE 


come to Oscar when he was out on bail, with a 


couple of first class tickets in his pocket, and 
gently suggested a mild trip to Folkestone, or 
the Channel Islands, Oscar might have let him- 
self be coaxed away. But to be called on to 
gallop ventre a terre to Erith—it might have been 
Deal—and hoist the Jolly Roger on board your 
lugger, was like casting a light comedian and 
first lover for Richard III. Oscar could not see 
himself in the part. 

“TI must not press the point too far; but it 
illustrates, I think, what does not come out at 
all in your book; that you were a very differ- 
ent person from the submissive and sympathetic 
disciples to whom he was accustomed. There 
are things more terrifying to a soul like Oscar’s 
than an, as yet unrealized possibility of a sen- 
tence of hard labor. A voyage with Captain 
Kidd may have been one of them. Wilde was 
a conventional man: his unconventionality was 
the very pedantry of convention: never was 
there a man less an outlaw than he. You were 
a born outlaw, and will never be anything else. 

“That is why, in his relations with*you, he 
appears as a man always shirking action—more of 
a coward (all men are cowards more or less) than 
so proud a man can have been. Still this does 
not affect the truth and power of your portrait. 
Wilde’s memory will have to stand or fall by it. 


— See Le e . eae  ee 


ee ee 


MEMORIES OF OSCAR WILDE 29 


“You will be blamed, I imagine, because you 
have not written a lying epitaph instead of a 
faithful chronicle and study of him; but you will 
not lose your sleep over that. As a matter of 
fact, you could not have carried kindness further 
without sentimental folly. I should have made 
a far sterner summing up. I am sure Oscar has 
not found the gates of heaven shut against him: 
he is too good company to be excluded; but 
he can hardly have been greeted as, “Thou good 
and faithful servant.’ The first thing we ask 
a servant for is a testimonial to honesty, sobriety 
and industry; for we soon find out that these 
are the scarce things, and that geniuses’? and 
clever people are as common as rats. Well, 
Oscar was not sober, not honest, not industrious. 
Society praised him for being idle, and perse- 
cuted him savagely for an aberration which it 
had better have left unadvertized, thereby mak- 
ing a hero of him; for it is in the nature of peo- 
ple to worship those who have been made to 
suffer horribly: indeed I have often said that if 
the crucifixion could be proved a myth, and 
Jesus convicted of dying of old age in com- 
fortable circumstances, Christianity would lose 
ninety-nine per cent. of its devotees. 

“We must try to imagine what judgment we 


10 'T’he English paste in Shaw; genius is about the rarest thing on 
earth whereas the necessary quantum of “honesty, sobriety and in- 
dustry,” is beaten by life into nine humans out of ten.—Eb, 

If so, it is the tenth who comes my way.—G. B. S, 


30 MEMORIES OF OSCAR WILDE | 


should have passed on Oscar if he had been a 
normal man, and had dug his grave with his 
teeth in the ordinary respectable fashion, as his 
brother Willie did. This brother, by the way, 
gives us some cue; for Willie, who had exactly 
the same education and the same chances, must 
be ruthlessly set aside by literary history as a vul- 
gar journalist of on account. Well, suppose 
Oscar and Willie had both died the day before 
Queensberry left that card at the Club! Oscar 
would still have been remembered as a wit and a 
dandy, and would have had a niche beside Con- 
greve in the drama. A volume of his aphorisms 
would have stood creditably on the library shelf 
with La Rochefoucauld’s Maxims. We should 
have missed the ‘Ballad of Reading Gaol’ and 
‘De Profundis’; but he would still have cut a 
considerable figure in the Dictionary of Na- 
tional Biography, and been read and quoted 
outside the British Museum reading room. 
“As to the ‘Ballad’ and ‘De Profundis,’ I 
think it is greatly to Oscar’s credit that, whilst 
he was sincere and deeply moved when he was 
protesting against the cruelty of our present 
system to children and to prisoners generally, he 
could not write about his own individual share 
in that suffering with any conviction or sym- 
pathy.** Except for the passage where he de- 


11 Superb criticism. 


MEMORIES OF OSCAR WILDE, 31 
scribes his exposure at Clapham Junction, there 
is hardly a line in ‘De Profundis’ that he might 
not have written as a literary feat five years 
earlier. But in the ‘Ballad,’ even in borrow- 
ing form and melody from Coleridge, he shews 
that he could pity others when he could not 
seriously pity himself. And this, I think, may 
be pleaded against the reproach that he was 
selfish. Externally, in the ordinary action of 
life as distinguished from the literary action 
proper to his genius, he was no doubt sluggish 
and weak because of his giantism. He ended 
as an unproductive drunkard and _ swindler; 
for the repeated sales of the Daventry plot, in so 
far as they imposed on the buyers and were not 
transparent excuses for begging, were undeniably 
swindles. For all that, he does not appear in 
his writings a selfish or base-minded man. He 
is at his worst and weakest in the suppressed ” 
part of ‘De Profundis’; but in my opinion it 
had better be published, for several reasons. It 
explains some of his personal weakness by the 
stifling narrowness of his daily round, ruinous 
to a man whose proper place was in a large 
public life. And its concealment is mischievous 
because, first, it leads people to imagine all sorts 
of horrors in a document which contains nothing 
worse than any record of the squabbles of 


12 J have said this in my way. 


32 MEMORIES OF OSCAR WILDE 


two touchy idlers; and, second, it is clearly a 
monstrous thing that Douglas should have a 
torpedo launched at him and timed to explode 
after his death. The torpedo is a very harmless 
squib; for there is nothing in it that cannot be 
guessed from Douglas’s own book; but the pub- 
lic does not know that. By the way, it is rather 
a humorous stroke of Fate’s irony that the son 
of the Marquis of Queensberry should be forced 
to expiate his sins by suffering a succession of 
blows beneath the belt. 

‘“‘Now that you have written the best life of 
Oscar Wilde, let us have the best life of Frank 
Harris. Otherwise the man behind your works 
will go down to posterity’* as the hero of my 
very inadequate preface to “The Dark Lady of 
the Sonnets.’ ” 


G. BERNARD SHAW. 


13 A characteristic flirt of Shaw’s humor. He is a great 
caricaturist and not a portrait-painter. 

When he thinks of my Celtic face and aggressive American 
frankness he talks of me as pugnacious and a pirate: “a Captain 
Kidd”: in his preface to “The Fair Lady of the Sonnets” he 
praises my “idiosyncratic gift of pity’; says that I am “wise 
through pity”; then he extols me as a prophet, not seeing that a 
pitying sage, prophet and pirate constitute an inhuman superman. 

I shall do more for Shaw than he has been able to do for me; 
he is the first figure in my new volume of “Contemporary Por- 
traits.” I have portrayed him there at his best, as I love to think 
of him, and henceforth he’ll have to try to live up to my con- 
ception and that will keep him, I’m afraid, on strain. 

God help me!—G. B. 8S. 


WT 
art ‘iy 


Te 


Sty 
ont 
Ra eters 
= tr A 


ere te 


Sir 


seh ; ns as = 

: ee 

te reaaaodkey 
see ies 


) 


Ton 


ea] 
ire 


viicoeris : 
insane 


peat 
pr eerrs bos Pb bl 
eaTO CHE 


reset 
baa 


a 


Biiiaiasais i 
: eee ‘ 
peat 


Wie 
mah atatadig $yd ths 


Fi CREE mae 
‘ 4) EL EBS “ 
Or ata airRes i 
BES Per atria 
: 
area 


Stee ee 


aye 
perrete 


es 


